


Shadows that Follow

by Wanderer (Straggler)



Series: Wait for the Dust to Settle [3]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Don't Examine This Too Closely, Gen, Hunter Stiles Stilinski, Multiple OC's, POV Derek, POV John, POV Stiles, Panic Attacks, Police Officer Stiles Stilinski, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-04
Updated: 2017-07-02
Packaged: 2018-10-14 18:42:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 43,274
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10542303
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Straggler/pseuds/Wanderer
Summary: They’re haunted by nightmares of people deceased, but that’s all they are: dreams. It’s nothing compared to the horrible reality of knowing that there’s someone out there hell-bent on revenge and wanting them dead.He thought he was done bleeding for his past but it turns out he hasn’t bled enough. He’s not sure how much more he can give in order to make things right but he has a feeling that it’ll take every last drop in his body before any of them can move on.They’ve come full circle.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This story takes place almost immediately after the conclusion of “Break the Foundation” and will probably focus on…well, I’m not gonna give you any spoilers, so yeah. You’ll just have to wait and read and see. 
> 
> I’ve noticed that I don’t give any of the others enough screen time, so…this is my attempt to remedy that travesty. In-between using his resources as a hunter while trying to keep things from blowing up as a police officer, Stiles didn’t really get a lot of opportunities to spend with everybody else. It didn’t help that most of them are at least a good 2 and a half hours away. This is probably me making a terribly lazy justification as to why I barely gave them more than a single conversation but it was the best that I could do at the time. However! Now that Stiles is taking some much needed time off from work I’ve decided to give this whole…“pack” thing a go, yeah?
> 
> I'm estimating about 10 or so chapters to this final part of the series. If any of y'all are worried that I might drop the story then worry not!! It will be finished. I'm also thinking of posting an update maybe every 4-5 days but definitely at least once a week if not more so. Hang on tight, ladies and gents, this might get bumpy.
> 
> One last note: While I can’t attest that my descriptions of experiencing panic attacks will be accurate please note that one will be included in this chapter. Take care and I hope you’ll come out just fine. I forgot to mention that everything I know in law enforcement is from watching a lot of CSI: New York, Bones and Castle so don’t take me seriously.

The nights are the hardest – the moments where he succumbs to his body’s desires to rest, falling into dreams of fire, smoke, cinders – and they are by far the worst. He dreams of how the flames burns his skin, how the smog blinds his eyes and how the ashes choke him until he can’t breathe and he wakes gasping for air. His heart beats a thundering rhythm in his chest and, even though he knows it’s impossible, he holds his hand over his ribs so that it may still, so that it won’t break free.

It’s ridiculous.

He’s never been without his nightmares but now he believes he’ll be forever cursed by them.

\-----

**Chapter 1**

\-----

He wakes to the feeling of a sharp knife’s edge digging deep into his chest, cutting through his skin and making him bleed rivers of red. It feels new and fresh every time despite that he’s been off the operating table and out of the surgery room for over a week, recuperating at home rather than in the pale, white rooms of the ICU that the hospital offers, smelling strongly of antiseptic and not much else.

His room is still dark, the first greys of a coming dawn just making its way across the skies. He can already hear the songbirds calling out and the sound of it grates his ears but it could be more from the pain he feels growing in his body than his irritation at the waking world.

Stiles groans as he reaches over on the table beside him, fumbling for a bottle of painkillers that doesn’t do much in comparison to Vicodin. He swallows down two pills with a gulp of cold water, washing down the dry taste in his mouth along with it and vainly hoping that the medicine will kick in with the same kind of efficiency Vicodin does but it’s a fruitless endeavor. It’s fitful, but he eventually manages to slip back into a light doze, occasionally coming back out of it with a slight pain-filled jerk of his body.

The Vicodin bottle is sitting empty in the trash. Melissa told him that if the pain was too much, if he needed more, then she could get some prescribed to him at no extra cost. He could – normal painkillers don’t exactly cut the cake – but with werewolves coming in and out of his room at least twice a day he figures he can forego gaining an addiction to the little white pills.

It’s a few hours later when he next fully wakes up, the skies a bright blue with light traffic along the road outside the house as people rush to get their kids to school or themselves to work. As he lies in bed with his eyes closed he belatedly notices the gentle breeze coming in from the window, the one he remembers he’d shut the night before going to bed.

‘Yes?’ He mutters as he cracks open his eyes and catches a blur of messy blonde hair beside him before deeming it enough to have an idea of who his early-morning visitor is. Her hair is in a ponytail, but the elastic is so worn that it’s barely holding it together.

‘Good morning,’ she says softly and it’s not long before he becomes aware of the tips of her cool fingers grazing along the skin of his arm. It’s then he realizes the pain in his chest is at its minimal. He sighs his thanks and turns his head to face Erica, eyes half-mast to stare at the dark smudges beneath her eyes and the tight look around her chapped lips. She’s out of her makeup and she looks every bit the young and vulnerable girl, looking worlds different compared to the image of confidence she boasted when he first met her all those years ago.

They’ve come a long way. Sometimes it feels like a completely different universe.

‘How long have you been here for?’ The room feels just on the right side of cold now that he thinks about it but he can see the goose bumps peppering along both of their exposed arms.

‘A while,’ she hedges as she shuffles just a little bit closer to his bed, dragging the wheels of his swivel chair nearer. ‘I woke up when it was still dark and I couldn’t get back to sleep so I...’ she trails off, eyes shifting to the side before looking back at him with a slightly sheepish expression.

He snorts and mumbles under his breath, knowing full well that she’ll have no trouble catching his words, ‘What has Derek been teaching you lot.’

Erica laughs quietly, her nails digging into his skin just a little bit in jest as she breaks out of her meek behavior and hooks one leg over the other with a little smirk growing on her lips, but it doesn’t last. The smile slips off and she uncrosses her legs again, slipping her toes in-between the mattress and the box spring. It jostles the bed and he can just barely feel the movements of her toes as she flexes them.

‘I’ve been talking to Derek,’ she starts telling him softly as she makes idle patterns over his skin while her other hand follows the dark lines going up her own arm.

He hums and nods, waits for her to continue talking as he shifts on the bed, feels a low-level thrum of pain burning in his chest. It’s not all from the painkillers, he knows.

‘I’ve been getting nightmares since mum died,’ she continues, her voice cracking at the end as she presses her lips together to stop them from shaking. Erica takes a deep breath through her nose and holds it for a half-minute before exhaling quietly. ‘It feels like they’re memories, like I’m living through them as they happen, so I asked if it’s a normal thing that happens for people like…us.’

Werewolves handle deaths differently, and it’s something he’s seen firsthand; they feel it on a more visceral level, like losing a part of themselves, like losing a limb. It’s hard enough dealing with death as a human – dealing with death as a supernatural creature is a whole other ball game.

‘Any good advice?’

She snorts and quips back, ‘From Derek?’

It prompts a laugh out of him but he quiets down almost immediately, wincing at the pull of his skin as he lays a hand over his sternum as though it might help soothe the ache. He catches her apology but he waves it off – it was worth the pain to hear Erica cracking jokes again.

The first time they’d talked about her mother she’d been distraught and barely coherent. She dreamt of someone holding a pillow over her nose and mouth, pushing down, down, down on her face until she couldn’t breathe and how no matter how much she tried she couldn’t move her arms enough to help herself.

Stiles remembers the report detailing Maria Reyes’ death. She’d just come out of surgery, still groggy from anesthesia, high off morphine, and with one arm held in a cast that’s still setting there was little to no chance of her being able to fight off Kate.

There’s still a low simmering of anger deep in his gut whenever he thinks of Kate and how he’d been too slow to figure everything out until it was almost too late.

‘I don’t like it,’ she whispers, the small shake in her voice making him move his arm away to catch her hand instead, holding her trembling fingers still in his grip. She’s not the only one.

‘What did you see?’ He asks her, squeezing her hand when he notices the first signs of tears appearing in her eyes.

She shakes her head, her lips forming in a mirthless smile as she looks away from their intertwined fingers to tell him with an unsteady voice, ‘I saw broken glass and twisted metal, all of them digging into my skin and making me bleed. I couldn’t move and I woke up screaming.’

Stiles thinks back on the car crash on Wimbley and Alcott, the sirens of half the police cruisers, ambulances and fire brigades available in Beacon Hills all converged on the cordoned-off intersection. He can still remember the crunch of metal as the firemen used the “jaws of life” to save Erica’s parents, the sound of her mother’s screams as they tried to get them out of the wrecked vehicle.

It’s almost ironic.

\--

When Katherine Argent’s cadaver was no longer needed and with most of the investigations pertaining to her over and done with, they released her body to Christopher Argent. He chose to have her cremated and after days of deliberation decided to bury the urn containing her ashes in their family plot.

Allison doesn’t like it, and as the groundskeeper piles shovel after shovel of dirt over the tiny burial, she tells him as much with clenched fists and a pinched look.

‘The dead can’t harm the living,’ Chris tries to console her but there’s still a lot of hurt left in her, not just from the betrayal of Kate but also from the death of her own mother and the manipulation she suffered under Gerard’s hand shortly after.

‘Depends on your definition of harm,’ she retorts as her eyes drift to Victoria Argent’s headstone instead, more hurt in her voice than any barbs meant to wound.

Stiles looks over towards Derek whose body is coiled up tight, ready to snap, and from the mixture of expressions on his face – pain, hate, anger and guilt – he knows exactly what she means.

As much as Derek deserves closure, he doubts the man will take it.

\--

He feels stiff in his suit, but he can’t tell if it’s because of the material itself or if it’s because the last time he’d worn it this many times was a few years ago during the trials regarding his kidnapping and Gerard’s eventual incarceration. He has a feeling it’s both.

The sound of Derek’s car rumbling down the street fades into the distance by the time Stiles trudges his way up the stairs, fingers pulling at the tie that’s been steadily choking him ever since he first laid eyes upon the plain white urn. He pulls it off his neck roughly and throws it onto his bed, popping the first three buttons until he doesn’t feel as though he’s being constricted. Stiles takes off his jacket next, opens the window as wide as he can when he starts to feel the beginnings of sweat gathering across his forehead and warming his skin too much too fast. His head hurts, had been hurting since the morning but now it’s beating a steady _thump-thump-thump_ in his skull and he hates the drumming sensation.

A sudden screech of tires just a few houses away shocks his attention, jolting him, the sound of it like a horrible stab into his brain. His chest aches, but he knows that not enough time has passed since he’d taken the last two pills and he knows he has to wait for another hour or so before he can swallow down the next batch.

He can hear a vehicle, his dad’s cruiser, pulling up into their driveway through his open window, shortly followed by the sound of the car door opening and closing and the jangle of keys.

His hands are so cold but the rest of him feels too hot and he has a sick, sick feeling in his stomach that he knows exactly what this is, what he’s going through. He can hear his name being called up the stairs and he doesn’t realize why the world is tilting until he finds himself staring up at the ceiling and clutching weakly at his chest as if it might help him draw in a decent enough breath.

‘Stiles!’ John is calling out for him again, urgently this time, as he helps him sit up from where he’s fallen onto the floor. ‘Breathe deep, breathe deep,’ he repeats and tries to lead by example. ‘Bear with me, Stiles.’

His vision is blurred but he makes use of his hearing instead, listening as his dad breathes and holds it in before exhaling slowly and repeating the process. He tries to mimic, but he finds himself taking four short breaths in the space that his dad takes one. He perseveres, keeps trying and trying until he takes three as his dad breathes in deeply once. He tries again, takes two as his dad draws in one slow lungful of air. It takes time but he eventually manages to copy his dad action for action, one inhale and one exhale for another. He calms.

‘I take it the funeral didn’t go too well?’ John asks as he continues to rub his hand along Stiles’ back despite the sweat now soaking through it.

‘Went without a hitch,’ he says hoarsely as he fumbles with the buttons on his cuffs on either hand until he can roll the sleeves up to his elbows. ‘It was just the four of us: Chris, Allison, me and Derek.’

‘Then what did I just witness?’

‘I don’t know,’ he replies honestly as he gets up from the floor only to collapse onto his bed on top of his tie and jacket with a shaky sigh. ‘Just one of those days, I guess,’ he shrugs, although most of the motion is lost to the covers surrounding his body.

‘Just one of those days, huh?’ He shakes his head as he takes a seat next to Stiles and pulls out his tie from under him, folding it neatly in half.

He feels insurmountably tired suddenly and he just wants to close his eyes and sleep what’s left of the afternoon away but his dad just got home from a 10-hour shift down at the station. The least he can do is have a late lunch/early dinner with him before he retires to bed to start it all over again the next day.

He doesn’t realize he’s actually got his eyes closed until he feels his dad tugging at the jacket that’s buried under his head and shoulders. ‘Get up; if your mother were here she’d throw a fit over the wrinkles you’re putting on your suit.’ Stiles groans but complies, pushing his body until he’s sitting up next to his dad to stare at the slight creases on the black material.

‘You better iron it before you hang it back up again.’

‘Tomorrow,’ Stiles promises as he undoes the rest of the buttons on his top and is satisfied when he doesn’t spot a hint of red coming through his undershirt. He thought he’d done some damage to the sutures when he started clawing at his chest during his panic attack but is thankful to see that it’s not entirely the case, even if it does hurt a little more than it did just minutes before.

‘Looks like we’re both having an early night, huh?’ His dad says as he stands up and hands the jacket back to him.

‘Yup,’ he finishes with a pop of his lips as he rolls the jacket around his arm and holds it over his knees.

‘Have you told Derek about his house, yet?’

He shakes his head, ‘No, it wasn’t a good time.’

John sighs tiredly. ‘Tell him soon, because there’s not much more I can do to help stop it.’

‘I will,’ he says as he gets up and unfurls the jacket over the back of his computer chair, catching the roll of his dad’s eyes as he exits the room. He follows him out, notices the takeaway boxes lying on the floor in the middle of the stairs and can’t help but raise an eyebrow at that. ‘Nice of you to drop dinner off.’

‘Shut up and eat your chicken cashew fried rice,’ he retorts without bite, handing to Stiles a clear plastic takeaway container with a spork taped to the lid.

He grins, thankful that most places don’t serve their food in styrofoam boxes anymore, otherwise the stairs will look more like a culinary disaster.

\--

While he’s on sick-leave, Stiles spends his days with varying levels of pain. It’s worse in the mornings after he’s woken up, tapers off into the kind of ache that’s still noticeable but not completely hindering during the afternoons and early evenings. He always wakes in the middle of the night, sweating through his shirts and grappling mindlessly for his painkillers again so that he might be able to sleep for more than just a handful of hours.

Melissa told him that this is a normal part of recovery; that it’s nothing unusual and nothing to worry about, but he’s constantly exhausted, constantly on edge, and constantly in pain.

Sometimes, and this is something that’s beginning to happen more and more frequently, he wakes at some midnight hour to a warm hand on his chest with lines tattooed all the way up the arm until it disappears under the hem of a shirt. He sees Derek with a haunted look on his face, the shadows beneath his eyes a stark contrast against the shine coming from the light of the moon outside the window.

It’s nights like these that he doesn’t wake to the feeling of knives cutting into his chest and digging deep.

‘You’re a pill, you know that?’ He says not unkindly, sleepy grin on his face as he settles a hand around Derek’s wrist, feeling the pulse point beating strongly beneath his fingertips.

‘Either you’re calling me a pain, which is ironic, or you’re mixing up your slangs,’ he tells him, looking away from the window to fix Stiles a stare that’s a cross between incredulity and indifference.

‘No, seriously; you and your werewolves are my personal walking-talking Vicodin pill.’

He huffs, rolls his eyes to look back out the window, thankfully shut to ward off the cold evening air. ‘Go back to sleep.’

It’s only then Stiles notices the way Derek is sitting in the chair beside him with half of his body hunched over the bed, shoulders tensed and eyes too wide and too focused on an enemy that’s no longer there. His lips are held together in a thin, pale line and the furrow between his eyebrows is turning into a permanent etch on his skin. Stiles tries to sit up but the hand over his sternum is a persistent weight holding him firmly, but carefully, down.

‘Hey,’ he starts as he squeezes Derek’s wrist in his hand, waits for him to look back before telling him with as much conviction he can muster despite the slur of sleep still evident in his voice, ‘she’s dead. You can breathe easy.’

Derek doesn’t say anything but Stiles can see the tenseness in his body gradually loosen enough that he doesn’t immediately look like he’s in his usual fight-or-flight mode. It’s not much – he’s too tired to do more – but he calls that an accomplishment and leaves it be.

He falls back to sleep with a warm hand on top of his chest and the steady beat of Derek’s heart on his fingertips. He always wakes up alone after Derek’s night visits, but the pain is minimal and he can still feel the heavy press of a hand and the warmth seeping through the bandages on his chest.

\-----

As Head of the House, there are certain rules and guidelines to follow, more than what is already bestowed upon a Hunter. They are not just soldiers, they are also the second-in-command; the fallback should the leader find themselves incapacitated, temporarily or otherwise something of a more permanent nature.

He knows the Code: he lives it, he breathes it, and by God, he will die by it. If there is only one thing he knows in this life, it’s the Code.

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm super tired. It's been a hectic week even though it's only Monday but every day is just busy-busy-busy and I'm like, staaaawwppp, pleeeaaaseeee. Anyways, here's another chapter! TOODLES.

The mirror cabinet lining the wall of his bathroom is bare save for an electric razor, shaving cream and aftershave. It used to be full of orange plastic containers and dark brown glass bottles filled with artificially flavored syrups meant to mask the acrid aftertaste but he’d thrown them all out the day he returned home after the Reading of the Will. Despite doing all this, despite that the house no longer carries a single prescription, he can’t stop dreaming of them.

His nightmares come in the form of white ash covering his skin, coating his tongue and clogging his throat. It blinds him, burns his insides, and when he wakes, no matter how much water he swallows down, he can never make the bitter taste in his mouth disappear along with it.

Boyd prays, and hopes that his grandmother is at peace, even if he doubts he’ll ever be.

\-----

**Chapter 2**

\-----

There’s a different ache in his chest, the kind that comes from knowing that there’s nothing holding the closed laceration together even though it’s been two weeks since he’d gone under the knife. There’s fear, too, at the thought that one wrong move would rip it right back open even though it’ll take a large amount of force to do that kind of damage. The sutures are gone and all that’s left on his chest is an itch he can’t scratch and a long, scabbed line that will eventually heal and fade into an ugly scar.

The tight sensation he’d felt across his chest is gone, too, only to be replaced by tension in his shoulders as he fights against his body’s need to relax against the strain even though it’s a necessity. He knows there isn’t any grounds to be this anxious about it, that he can still go about his daily life as normal (or a normal as one can be), but it’s odd: there’s a thrum echoing just beneath the bones of his ribs, quivering in his lungs. He doesn’t know what to make of it so he continues to keep rigid, as if it might help the rest of his body get on with the program.

The television is on mute, showing a replay of a tennis game, and he can hear his dad’s snoring since his bedroom happens to be right above the living area. He takes comfort in the noise, although it isn’t as entertaining as the grunts and shouts the tennis players make whenever they return a hit, but his snoring is a good sound nonetheless: reassuring.

Stiles remains seated in the middle of the couch, taking up a majority of the space, his back sinking into the creases of where the back cushions meet to assist with his worsening posture. He’s almost certain he’ll end up with a permanent slouch before the month is over if he were to continue on this way. If mum were alive to see him behave in such a manner she would most likely be clicking her tongue and shaking her head in dismay, forcing his back straight with a light reprimanding pat on his shoulders.

He doesn’t know for sure, though, because all he has of her are video tapes and photo albums that’s he gone through countless of times over the years as well as the rare conversation from his dad here and there about how she used to be. Sometimes he wonders if dad’s snoring had driven her crazy at some point in their lives that they had shared together as husband and wife. Sometimes, and this has been happening more often these days due to the fact that he suddenly has a lot of free time on his hands, he thinks about what kind of person his mum was.

The videos and photographs: they don’t help; they only show the maternal side of her, a woman who smiles and laughs and cries tears of joy at the little boy in her arms. The attic hides away all her clothes, shampoos and makeup, her personal diaries, collection of foreign coins as well as her finished and unfinished DIY projects.

Stiles only ever went to his dad’s bathroom out of childish curiosity once but once was enough for him to find a single bottle of perfume standing next to a bottle of cologne that he knows his dad no longer uses. He wonders if his dad still keeps a drawer of his mum’s clothes in his room, or her favorite dress in the back of the closet next to his pressed suits, maybe even a pair of heels kicked under the bed and semi-forgotten.

He breaks out of his thoughts at the sound of a particularly loud snort and switches the TV off just as his phone starts ringing. He picks up after a cursory look at his caller.

‘Hey, Scott, what’s up?’ He asks as he shifts forward on the cushions before taking his time pushing himself away from the couch, turning towards the kitchen and shuffling his way there.

‘I heard you got your stitches out,’ he says in lieu of an actual greeting, some static coming through that sounds as if Scott’s facing the wind as he speaks into his phone.

 ‘Heard it through the grapevine?’

Scott lets out a loud huff of a laugh in agreement. ‘If that’s code for “mum” then yeah, totally; we talked earlier this afternoon when she was on her lunch break. How’re you feeling?’

The noise from Scott’s end of the conversation quiets down, followed by the closing of a door and a light tinkle of keys as it’s dropped onto a wooden surface. ‘I’ll be fine, eventually. Did you just finish class or something?’ He changes the subject eagerly, not quite keen on delving into the topic of his health.

Scott’s quiet for a moment but he takes the cue without question. ‘Yeah, just got back from the lecture hall and man, as much as I’m excited for break I’m not too keen on going back to work.’

‘I thought you liked working with old-man Orville,’ he brings up as he opens the fridge to peer at the shelves before pulling out the vegetable drawer in consideration of what he wants to snack on. Carrot sticks and a hummus dip, maybe?

‘Yeah, man, I totally do, but he’s retiring soon and he’s giving his business away to an old friend of his. The handover will be done with by the time I roll back into Beacon Hills so that means I won’t ever be working with him again,’ he grumbles, sounding disheartened. ‘He told me the guy’s nice though, and they used to work together, too, but…yeah…’ he finishes with an explosive sigh.

‘Think of it this way,’ he starts as he picks up the gallon of milk and swings the door shut, deciding to finish off what’s left in the bottle instead, ‘if the two of you hit it off, maybe he’ll give _you_ the business when _he_ retires, yeah?’

Scott laughs into the phone and Stiles can’t help the answering grin on his own face at the sudden enthusiasm coming from the other. ‘That would be so awesome.’

‘Imagine your name on the front window,’ he entices as he unscrews the plastic cap and starts drinking straight from the bottle.

‘Very awesome,’ he says in agreement. ‘I kinda hope the new guy will be as nice as old-man Orville but I guess I won’t know until I work with him.’

Stiles hums in agreement as he swallows down the rest of the milk, licking the last of it from his lips before tossing it into the trash along with the cap. ‘You’ll both learn a lot about each other when you have to work with one another during stressful situations,’ he tells him as he makes his way out of the kitchen, past the living room and up the stairs towards his room.

‘Yeah, it’ll probably be pretty intense, but hey, I have to go; I’ve got this paper due in three days and another one due next week,’ he finishes with an obligatory grouse. ‘I just wanted to check up on you before I hunker down and do my assignments but I’ll see you again during break.’

‘See you then. Good luck with your papers.’

‘Thanks a lot, dude.’

He hangs up and stands by his bedroom door, listening in on his dad’s snoring just echoing around from down the hall. He lets the sound of it soothe and ease the pressure he feels in his gut before he grabs the doorknob and turns, stepping inside a room with its lights on even though he’d been downstairs when the sun had just set.

Stiles immediately catches sight of Derek sitting on his computer chair, facing the closed laptop with a hand just idly resting above his chest. He stops when he notices the placement of Derek’s palm, settled directly over the spot where the bullet had stopped just half an inch into his body after it had gone through his own back and chest.

‘You said you’ve healed,’ he says, worry and anger tinting in his voice as Derek suddenly breaks out of whatever thought process he’d been going through.

I have,’ he reassures as he drops his hand away, the motion all too obvious and far too conspicuous, and Stiles can’t help but narrow his eyes at the other as he points a finger at him.

‘Lie,’ he calls out on him but doesn’t force Derek to explain as he closes the door behind him with a soft click and walks pass him to lie back on his bed, leaving his phone on the bedside table. ‘What’re you doing here?’ He asks instead, knowing Derek won’t be open for questions concerning why he looked as if he was still hurting from a bullet wound that’s long since healed.

‘You got your stitches out,’ Derek answers simply as he turns his chair to face the bed with his fingers curled shut above his knees. ‘I heard it through the grapevine.’

Stiles laughs but winces when it aggravates his lungs too much. ‘Don’t be cheeky,’ he reprimands half-heartedly as he rubs gently along the skin around the laceration. His phone chimes a tune to alert him of a message but he ignores it. ‘Answer the question.’

‘Nothing else to do at the motel,’ he says with a casual one-shoulder shrug, ‘it kind of smells.’

‘Understatement of the week,’ he snorts as he pulls himself up on his bed until he’s sitting with his pillows bracing his back against the wall. ‘I’m guessing your apartment-hunting didn’t go too well.’

‘No,’ he says with a light huff. ‘A lot of the landlords think I’m prone to creating fire hazards and aren’t willing to let me rent. My credit history is good but it’s not enough to convince them.’

‘What bullshit,’ he swears, ignoring the phone when it chimes a second time, suddenly feeling more anger well up in his stomach, vibrating beneath his ribs at the thought that some people would be ignorant enough to think something as stupid as that. If anybody had done any proper fact-checking then they would’ve known that both of his homes were burned to the ground by a now-dead Kate Argent.

‘It’s fine—’

‘It’s not fine.’

‘It’s _fine_ ,’ he insists around a slight grit of his teeth, his fists tightening to the point where his knuckles pale. ‘I have two more appointments set up for tomorrow late morning and early afternoon. Maybe I’ll find someone willing to let me rent then.’

He nods but Derek doesn’t sound convinced and if _he’s_ not convinced then it’s almost certain that his luck wouldn’t hold out long enough for him to sign a lease. Given that he’s been looking for a place to stay for the past two weeks since his loft burned down it seems as though the odds are stacked against him. Stiles honestly doubts Beacon Hills has that many apartment complexes to begin with and he can’t help but wonder what Derek is stalling for.

‘You have other options,’ he tries to suggest but Derek is quick to shut the idea down.

‘I’m not taking up your guest room.’

‘I’m not offering you the guest room when you’ve already said no to it once before, asshole,’ he snaps without meaning to, feeling frayed around the edges thinking about Derek’s current living situation. Derek won’t take the guest room, or stay with Boyd, or room with Isaac in his dorm. He understands why the older man won’t take up on anybody’s offer of a place to stay, even if it’s just temporarily, but it’s not charity, or pity – it’s what friends do; it’s how they look out for one another; it’s pack.

Derek exhales through his nose, his expression settling back into his usual perpetual frown as he waits with his thumb tapping an idle pattern across his jeans impatiently.

‘There’s a good plot of land out in the preserve – don’t give me that look,’ Stiles points at him when the thunderous glare makes a reappearance. ‘I’ve seen the papers; there’s a petition going on for the county to take back the property since you’re not doing anything with it.’

‘It’s private property,’ he grinds out from between sharp teeth.

‘You think they give a shit? They don’t, Derek. You want to know what they’ve been saying? “ _That piece of rot is ruining the integrity of our land_ ,” is what they’ve been saying.’

‘It’s _private_ , _property_ ,’ he stresses, his canines slowly lengthening as his mood spikes.

‘You have, at the most, three months before your lack of participation makes you forfeit the rights to that land. They’re going to take it back, they’re going to bulldoze the house, and they’re going to clear the space to merge it with the rest of the preserve. And there’s nothing you can do about it once your time is up.’

A quiet growl makes itself heard, rumbling from within Derek’s chest as he breathes deeply in an effort to contain his emotions. Stiles can see his anger clear in his posture but he can also see his despair, his guilt, and his fears in his eyes, in the downturn of his lips and the white knuckles of his tight-fisted grip.

‘My dad has been trying to get them off your back; to buy you more time but it’s been years, Derek. The house is condemned and the whole place looks like a God-damned mausoleum. You think that’s a mark of respect? It’s not; it’s a mockery to your family.’

‘You’re one to talk,’ he seethes suddenly, voice quiet and slowly gaining momentum as he stands from his seat, fists clenched and looking ready to fly. ‘How many people have you killed? How many families have you torn apart? You don’t get to talk to me about respect and how I’m a mockery when you’ve been in the business of lying your way in for practically your entire life.’

The abrupt shift in mood catches him off-guard but he’s quick to get on the defense. ‘How the fuck is this suddenly about me?’ He demands as he gets up to his feet, legs apart and braced for impact as he glares unblinkingly back into Derek whose eyes are constantly shifting back and forth his normal hue to blood red.

‘ _You_ don’t get to tell me to move on when you haven’t made that move yourself.’

It feels like a physical hit right into his sternum and he can’t help the flinch as his mind blanks.

A double knock on the door takes their attention away from each other to the entrance of the room where his dad is now standing looking at them with a slightly peeved and bleary-eyed expression. Derek looks over for only a split second for turning away again, resolutely facing the closed window and the latched lock.

‘Either the both of you take it downstairs or be quieter about it. I’m off-duty and I don’t want to have to bring you both in for creating a domestic disturbance. Don’t think I won’t,’ he threatens with a pointed finger.

‘Sorry,’ Stiles apologizes as he settles back on his bed, suddenly tired and drained of all adrenaline. He doesn’t even know how their conversation escalated the way it did.

John sighs long and hard as he mutters under his breath about “youths these days” before shutting the door behind him. Derek doesn’t stay for much longer, already moving towards the window and sliding off the bolt keeping it shut.

Stiles can hear the rustle of jeans and the creak of leather as Derek positions himself for a two-storey jump. There’s an ache in his chest suddenly but he knows it’s not at all from the injury.

 ‘All I’m saying is: your family is dead; the land is dead, but that doesn’t mean you have to be,’ Stiles tells him without turning around, keeping his gaze focused on the carpet beneath his toes as he listens to the squeak of wood  readjusting itself to take on extra weight.

‘My answer is still no.’

‘At least think about it.’

There’s no reply and no noise for a long time. Stiles doesn’t hear that _thump_ to indicate Derek’s landing on the grass so he knows the older man is still there, hanging outside his window, looking like the world’s craziest robber for trying to make a B &E on a sheriff’s home whose son also happens to be a police officer.

Eventually, Derek replies, voice soft and worn, ‘I don’t want to watch my home burn down a second time.’

The confession catches him by surprise as he lifts his head towards Derek. ‘The loft doesn’t count?’

‘The loft didn’t matter.’

Between one second and the next, Derek’s gone from his window, leaving behind a cold draft and an even colder feeling in his body.

‘Lie,’ he calls out on him but he’s not around to hear it.

\-----

Nobody notices it at first – the slight discrepancy in the upkeep of their storage system – but there’s a small, miniscule gap of where they know something used to be; the numbers aren’t adding up. They can’t remember who it involves, or what details it contains, but they know it must pertain to some kind of important knowledge if it’s suddenly gone missing.

They can’t find it anywhere within the station; not on anyone’s desk and it’s not stuck in-between tables that are wedged together to save and create space. When they go to check the records they discover that there hasn’t been any foul-play. Their instincts, of course, tell them otherwise.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hit me up if you notice any spelling/grammar errors. Cheers!


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is what happens when you're at the tail-end of the Teen Wolf trend; hardly anybody bothers to read your stuff. XD I still like reading TW stories, though. I dunno, maybe it's nostalgia or something, or just being able to get away from real life for a little bit...
> 
> Meh.

He’s tired from the visit to the hospital, feels even more tired at the thought of returning back to the place he’s called home for over four years.

The walls are drab and grey, the seats are unforgiving and the metal surrounding his wrists and ankles even more so. The road is bumpy; a combination of poor planning, tree roots forcing its way through concrete while also being pockmarked with one pothole after another, the constant vibrations well on their way to ruining the bones of his spine. There isn’t anybody else sitting in the back with him and the only thing he has for company are the snug pieces of cuffs keeping him chained and contained.

He keeps his feet apart, braced for more, and it’s not long before the transport vehicle lurches to a dead stop and he smiles at the sudden screech of tires peppered with gun shots, the crack of glass and the twang of metal denting under pressure. He hears people shouting, people calling for help and the sound of their request dying on their lips.

The doors open to reveal more grey but it’s the kind of grey that makes him think of freedom, and as he steps off onto the asphalt he can feel it rejuvenating him down to his core.

He is _free_.

\-----

**Chapter 3**

\-----

He jolts awake, his mind struggling to separate his dreams of sizzling skin and bone-shaking agony from his physical, undamaged body. The living room is dark, it’s 4 o’clock in the morning, the couch is uncomfortable, and just one room over is Isaac, heart-rate spiking and body thrashing amongst rumpled sheets, his throat making aborted sounds of pain and distress as he struggles within his nightmares.

Derek continues to fight against the sensation of choking on ash but it’s not long before his mind fully disconnects from his REM cycle to the living world. He throws himself into an upright position as he makes his way towards the closed bedroom door, eyes quickly readjusting to the dark lighting until he’s twisting the doorknob open and hovering over the bed to shake Isaac away from his dreams.

The blond comes to with a throaty gasp, eyes wild and full of fear, guilt and tears. His body shakes uncontrollably, his features all too human although his claws are out, ripping through Derek’s long-sleeved henley and digging into his forearms without thought as he tries to breathe past the panic and adrenaline still coursing through his body. Eventually, he calms but the tremors don’t fully fade away, and he avoids eye-contact as his body radiates shame.

‘Get up,’ Derek tells him as he straightens, ignoring the healing pinpricks of pain and the tickle of blood going down his arm, wetting the material of his sleeves. He waits for his words to be obeyed before leaving the bedroom towards the kitchenette, going through the familiar motions of retrieving a glass of water from the jug in the mini-fridge and handing it over for the disheveled blond to take. He watches Isaac drink all of it; slow, tentative sips at first before he gulps the rest down without pause for breath.

Isaac’s heartbeat settles, faster than its normal rhythm but slower than what it had been when he was trapped within the turmoil of his mind. Of what, Derek doesn’t ask. Instead he says, ‘You have class in three hours; try and go back to sleep.’

The blond nods, but he seems edgy, unsure, and cowed as he places the empty glass in the sink, gives his bloody fingertips a thorough wash before rinsing out the glass and placing it on the dish rack to drip dry.

‘Sorry,’ he says tentatively as he eyes the bloody trails on Derek’s arm even though they’ve healed. Isaac meets his eyes haltingly before leaning back until he’s supported by the countertop, arms crossed tightly across his chest and shoulders hunched until he’s almost bowed over.

Derek shakes his head; wants to tell him that it’s nothing to apologize for but Isaac is the kind of guy who will make one apology after another, even for something that isn’t his own fault. It’s moments like these that Derek wishes someone had found Isaac sooner, someone better.

‘You’ll be fine,’ he tells him as he rolls his sleeves up and gives his arms a quick run under the cold water, just enough to get the smears of fresh blood off his skin.

Isaac is staring at him when he’s done wiping his arms dry with the hand towel, bemusement coloring his expression in replacement of his earlier fear and shame. Now, for some odd reason, he looks hopeful, eyes wide and bright.

‘Does it get better?’ He asks as his visible hand grips tightly onto the sleeve of his t-shirt. ‘Do the nightmares get easier to handle? Do they stop?’

Derek’s mind blanks and his body stills as he takes in the rapid-fire questions. He wants to say “no” to all of it because they’ve never gotten better, they’ve never gotten easier, and they’ve never stopped, not for him at least. He doesn’t say any of that, but he’s not one to create false hope, either.

‘I don’t know,’ he answers honestly because, truthfully, he’s been having the same nightmare of fire, ash and smoke for years. They never change and he doubts they ever will. ‘I don’t know,’ he says again as he puts the hand towel back onto its’ hook next to the dish rack to dry, ‘maybe they will.’ He wants it to be true, for Isaac and everybody else in his pack at least, the young adults who don’t deserve to be plagued and chased by nightmares.

When he next looks up, the blonds’ gaze is still hopeful, not so weighed down around his shoulders. His hunch is straightening out and his heart is calm once more.

Derek moves his way out of the kitchenette, places his hand on Isaac’s shoulder as he passes him to get to the couch where his jacket is hanging off the arm. He rolls his sleeves back down, ignoring the rips in the fabric and the blood marking them before slipping his jacket back on, relishing the feel of the cool material wrapping around his body.

‘You can stay, if you want,’ Isaac says hurriedly as he follows Derek into the small living room, arms hanging loosely by his sides. ‘It’s still the middle of the night.’

He can’t believe he managed to fall asleep on the couch in the first place, though it’s not that surprising; he’s surrounded by the familiar smell of pack, of safety; infinitely better than the stench of piss, stale alcohol and sex-soaked sheets beneath the industrial detergent. The last thing he remembers doing was watching some late-night TV while Isaac multi-tasks that with his laptop work, fingers tapping diligently away on the keyboard for a paper that’s due in less than a week’s time.

‘I’m going to make my rounds,’ Derek tells him as he steps towards the door, turning the knob open and pushing the lock back in. ‘We’re still on for lunch with the others.’

‘Oh, okay,’ he relaxes, already appeased by the prospect of it.

Derek nods as he leaves, makes sure the door is firmly shut and locked behind him before heading towards the stairwell, opting to walk down the four flights of stairs rather than take the noisy and sometimes temperamental elevator.

The car, when he starts it, is uncomfortably loud in the still night but he keeps it to second gear as he makes his way out of the parking lot towards the preserve, passing by Boyd’s house while en route and idling for a few short minutes to count the deep, even breaths and the occasional loud snore. The longer he stays, the longer he listens to the calm heartbeat, the looser the tension in his shoulders seems to ease up.

He leaves shortly after, rolling as quietly as he can down the street and remaining respectful of the speed limit until he’s parking his car on the very edge of the woods, deciding to do the rest of the round on foot instead.

Erica is sleeping when he makes it to her house, though her heart rate is elevated slightly and he can smell the salt of her tears coming out through the slight gap of her open window. Her breathing is heavy through her mouth, her nose obviously stuffed from another hard night of crying. She’s not in the throes of another nightmare so he silently bids her a good night, hopes it stays that way, before leaving towards Stiles’ home.

He’s half a block away when he realizes that Stiles isn’t asleep – heart rate going too fast to be considered as such – and not only is he completely awake but he’s also typing furiously into his laptop. As soon as he’s just two houses away he can already see the dim light coming through the gaps of his closed curtains and the slight murmurings that he can hardly discern.

His body moves on memory, making the easy jump until he’s latching onto the ledge, knocking on the glass just once before sliding the window open, pushing the curtains aside and stepping through without trouble. Their conversation from yesterday still stings, fresh and raw, but he pushes his personal feelings aside for the bigger picture: he knows something is wrong.

Stiles is already turned around in his seat, posture tense and knuckles white as they eye one another. The screen on his laptop is displaying a familiar site and he can see the BHPD logo on the top left corner, followed by a badge number and log-in name. He doesn’t know what Stiles is working on but if it’s important enough to make him stay up at all hours of the night then it’s not something to be taken lightly.

‘Working from home?’ Derek asks even though he knows Stiles has been assigned to three months of paid leave. He remembers the sheriff forbidding his son from entering the station and more than happily threatened to extend his desk job by double if he so much as steps one foot inside the building when he’s meant to be on the road to recovery. Of course, John never considered Stiles’ prowess with technology.

‘Something like that,’ he tells him with a stiff shrug as he picks up his phone from beside the laptop before handing it over for Derek to take. ‘This was sent to me yesterday early evening.’

He takes the phone and eyes the picture detailing a familiar crest that suddenly makes him see red. He frowns as he looks away from the photo back to Stiles. ‘Allison has something like this,’ he doesn’t mention the last person who owned the necklace before her, though he has a feeling Stiles more than understands.

Stiles nods, looking disturbed as he runs a hand through his unkempt hair before rubbing along the side of his face. ‘Yeah, it’s the Argent family crest; she wears it around her neck. It signifies leadership and it’s passed down from one matriarch to another.’

‘What does the ring signify?’ He asks, nodding down at the phone.

‘The soldier; Chris wears it now, as Head of the family.’

Stiles looks as if he wants to say more but minutes pass and not another words slips past his mouth. ‘Is he in trouble?’ Derek asks as he turns his attention back to the photo, eyes lingering on the curves and sharp turns of the crest. He doesn’t have any ill feelings towards Chris, although the same can’t be said for his father and his sister. Between the two of them they ruined more lives than Derek is capable of counting.

‘It’s not Chris we have to worry about,’ he says as he stands from his seat, takes the phone back and swipes through a new set of commands to bring up something else before handing it back for Derek to see.

It’s a message, reading: _Be careful. Prison bars and security guards won’t hold forever._

He feels his breath dissipate from his lungs, body tensing up in preparation for an unseen enemy. ‘Who sent this?’

‘It’s a burner phone; I can’t trace the number,’ he explains as he gestures to his laptop. ‘At this point I’m going to assume it’s already been discarded.’

‘Does your father know?’ He asks and listens as a familiar car makes itself known less than a dozen houses away. ‘If this is a threat—’

‘It’s not a question of _if_ ,’ he grinds out between clenched teeth as he turns his attention to the window to where he can now hear the police cruiser rolling up into the driveway and the harsh crank of the handbrakes pulling.

Both of them listen as the front doors open and close a bit too loudly, followed by footsteps hurrying up the stairs possibly by taking two or three steps at a time before the sheriff is barreling through  the door, breath short and eyes wide with worry.

The older man takes in the sight of Derek with only a slightly bemused expression but it reverts back to one of agitation as he tells them, ‘We just received news that Gerard Argent’s transport vehicle didn’t make it back to prison from the hospital.’

Something cold settles in Derek’s stomach, the feeling spreading all too quickly along his arms, legs and body as he stares numbly at John. He can hear Stiles’ heartbeat ratcheting up and his lungs rattling beneath his rib cage.

‘Two officers are dead and there’s no sight of Gerard anywhere – he’s gone.’

Stiles swears loudly as he runs his fingers through his hair again, pulling at the strands as he falls back into his computer chair, body shaking and chest heaving loudly. Immediately, John kneels in front of Stiles, prying his fingers away from his hair and holding onto his wrists tightly, telling him to breathe and bear, _breathe and bear_.

Derek watches as Stiles spirals into a full-blown panic attack, fingers opening and closing on thin air, lungs working furiously to keep up with his body’s demands. He watches him come back out of it, looking worn, pale and ragged around the edges, still shuddering uncontrollably as he counts his inhales and exhales with stutters. He watches John the same way, catches the dark smudges beneath his eyes, the tight lines around his mouth, the deep furrow between his eyebrows and the tremors in his shoulders as he holds his son close to him.

His chest aches at the sight.

\-----

She asks him the same questions every visit, calmly and with hardly ever a shift in her professional tone, never mind that he has made somewhat irregular visits to her office ever since their last psychiatrist retired and he was promoted to the roll of Deputy. Her walls are lined with framed copies of her credentials as well as inspirational and motivational quotes. There’s a plain black, laminated A4 sheet of paper with white font tacked to the wall behind her: _If you’re going through Hell, keep going._

It’s protocol, absolutely mandatory; to attend therapy sessions with the psychiatrist to make sure he’s of sound mind, so he can return to his office and inform his crew, without a shred of doubt, that his psych evaluation is good; better than good – they can depend on him. He has seven more therapy sessions to go before they can finish conducting their business.

He doesn’t regret shooting Kate down to save Stiles. He only regrets he didn’t get there fast enough to save his son the added trauma of suffering through a back and chest injury. Privately, as a Sheriff, he doesn’t regret taking away his subordinate’s gun, but as a father and a parent, he wishes he hadn’t done so.

But just when he thought he was done worrying about the Argents who ruined his son’s life, another problem comes along in the form of a prison-break. He wants it all to be done, but he worries it’ll come at a high cost, one he’s not sure he can pay.

 


	4. Chapter 4

She wakes up tied to a chair, bound at her ankles and with her wrists held together by a tight knot behind her. There’s a single bulb hanging right above her head, swaying noiselessly and casting eerie shadows around the area of where she sits. She can’t see beyond where the light shines but she can feel that she’s not alone. Somewhere, beyond that circle of light, someone is watching her every move.

Her body is shaking and it takes her several deep breaths to calm and several more to remember the lessons her father taught her. The first lesson: never go anywhere unprepared.

\-----

**Chapter 4**

\-----

His dad only stays long enough to make sure he’s okay, to give him what little information of what he knows about what’s going on with Gerard Argent who’s suddenly gone off the grid, before leaving to go back to work the rest of his double-shift. He casts Derek furtive looks every now and again but he doesn’t seem too put-off by his presence at what is essentially 5 o’clock in the early morning.

It’s still dark out but he can already hear the birds waking, breaking the tumultuous silence between them with their morning song.

‘I’ll be fine, dad,’ Stiles tells him when his dad hovers by the top of the stairs, looking emotionally troubled and hesitant about leaving the home. He doesn’t blame him; he feels the same way.

‘One more thing,’ John mutters as he passes Stiles again, walking down the end of the hall towards his bedroom and disappearing inside.

Stiles follows him but keeps near the threshold of the room, not quite able to make that tiny step inside, still reeling from the findings of his first and only visit. He watches as his dad pulls open the bedside table cabinet to reveal a small personal safe. He doesn’t manage to get a glimpse of the combination but he catches sight of a gun, a folder of documents and the corner of what looks to be a jewelry box. John takes out two items from within the safe before snapping it shut and turning the dial to a random number. Stiles can’t hide the surprise on his face when his service pistol is given to him, handle first.

‘This isn’t permission to go after him; you understand me?’ His dad warns sternly. ‘This is for self-defense only.’

‘Yes, Sir,’ he tries to say with as much resolve as he can muster but it comes out shaky, too full of emotions he can’t pin down long enough to express his gratitude at the trust his dad is still willing to bet on him. That said, he won’t make promises he can’t keep – if there’s a chance, however slight, that he can end everything with a single bullet then he’ll take it.

‘I’m not ordering you as the county sheriff; this is me trying to look out for you as a father.’

Stiles tightens the grip he has around the handle of the gun, suddenly heavy in his hands, growing heavier when his dad lets go and holds out the magazine to go with it. He nods in understanding and watches his dad mimic the movement, stiff in the neck, before putting the gun back together, checking and re-checking each component and making sure the safety in on before pointing the barrel downwards, away from any body parts.

‘I’ll give you an update as soon as I get it,’ John tells him as he holds onto Stiles’ shoulders and squeezes tightly once, ‘don’t go anywhere without somebody else with you. Make up a buddy system.’

He can hear the pleading in his dad’s tone, can feel it in the squeeze of his fingers, tight and desperate.

‘Yeah, I will,’ he says with another small nod, trying to be as reassuring as he can be in that small gesture but he can’t help but tighten his fingers around the handle of the gun as he thinks about all the risks and dangers around Gerard Argent being currently loose in the state of California.

‘Stay safe.’

‘You, too,’ he tells him, his voice lowered down to a scared whisper as John gives his shoulders one last squeeze before passing him. Stiles listens as his dad makes his way down the hall and down the stairs, out the front door and right back into his cruiser, the rumble of the engine turning over before fading into the distance. John had barely been at home for a half hour.

The service pistol has never felt so heavy in his grip before in all the other times he’s kept it strapped to his holster. It’s been his constant companion for the past 4 years, not including all the other weapons he used to carry on him, but now it feels so much more difficult to hold onto. His hand is shaking when he looks down at it, his body betraying him for the second time in as many hours as he takes in the cold, black metal and everything it symbolizes – protection, corruption, trust, betrayal – and he hates how something as small as this, barely even a significant portion of his body weight, is enough to bring him to his knees.

His head hurts, his chest hurts, his vision is blurring and he can’t breathe. The metal is digging into his palm, his hand a pale and stark contrast to the weapon he’s holding. The safety is on but he doesn’t feel safe, he doesn’t feel right, he doesn’t feel in control. He’s not okay.

Stiles hears his name being called to him the same instance he sees a hand encircling his wrist, holding on tight enough to ground him back to the here and now. The gun slips out of his grasp and falls to the carpet with a light thud as he listens to Derek repeat to him what his dad told him – _breathe_. There’s a warm hand on his shoulder, a faint echo of where his dad held on, and the weight of it makes it easier to inhale deeply and hold it in.

He stays where he is, kneeling in the doorway of his dad’s bedroom with his eyes firmly focused on the carpet fibers and not the gun in front of him. Derek’s fingers are still wrapped around his wrist, his hand a solid weight on his shoulder, and it’s only now that Stiles takes in their awkward positioning in-between the doorway and the building cramp in his knee joints.

‘Thanks,’ Stiles murmurs as he looks at where Derek is crouching in an uncomfortable stance behind him. The older man takes it as his cue to straighten up, give him back his space but he doesn’t leave him alone in the middle of the hallway.

He forces himself to pick up the service pistol and get back on his feet before traversing the short distance towards his bedroom. The gun makes a heavy thunk when he leaves it on his desk and he’s careful to keep his eyes strictly focused on his periphery rather than what’s in front of him as he sits back down and rubs a hand along his chest. It comes away clean.

‘I didn’t know you get panic attacks,’Derek says abruptly, standing near the window and opening it just a crack to let in some fresh air.

‘I’m a mess,’ he tries to joke but it comes out too heavy and too full of resentment to make the cut. He sighs and he wants to drop the subject but talking about it, about anything, is better than being left to his own thoughts, jumping from one worst case scenario to the next.‘It’s nothing new; I’ve been having them since I was a kid. I thought I was getting better,’ he finishes quietly as he rubs the hem of his shirt between his fingers.

Derek doesn’t say anything else. Stiles doesn’t expect him to.

\--

The buddy system isn’t difficult to figure out – it’s the anxiety that comes from waiting for something bad to happen that puts Stiles on edge. It’s not paranoia, he doesn’t think; it’s a sense he developed over the years from working as both a hunter and a police officer and he’s always considered it as a part of his survival instincts. He knows, without a shred of a doubt, that it’s only a matter of time before Gerard throws a wrench into their lives.

If he hasn’t done so already.

Scott doesn’t pick up his phone, not even after the third try.  It leaves an unsettling feeling in his gut but Stiles decides to leave a message for him anyway, letting him know about Gerard and telling him to break the dorm rules and bunk with Allison for however long he can manage to get away with.

There’s only less than two weeks left until break – their RA can afford to be lax about the rules.

‘Try not to get caught,’ he ends the message with a half-hearted smirk before hanging up, staring intensely at the screen of his phone as it fades to black.

Derek is not quite pacing the room from corner to corner but he seems tense and uneasy as he explains the new situation to Isaac with an occasional hand gesture, relaying the same information they got from John about Gerard and repeating most of it word for word. It feels like they’re both a broken record, first with Erica then with Chris, saying the same lines over and over and over again, but it’s a necessity if they want everybody caught up on what’s going on.

‘Find Erica and Boyd,’ Derek says into the mouthpiece, stopping beside the window and eyeing the horizon that’s lightening up, ‘stay with them. If you see any group of hunters that aren’t led by Chris then go the other way: do not engage.’

While Stiles isn’t particularly gifted with exceptional hearing, even he can hear the derisive snort coming from Isaac’s end of the line. There’s even the barest hint of a smirk on Derek’s lips as he tells the other to be careful before ending the call and going through a list of commands to execute another one.

It’s a little after eight in the morning and Stiles is exhausted from a combination of a screwed-up body clock as well as lack of sleep from the previous night. The text messages he received yesterday coupled with the knowledge that Gerard Argent is no longer in a secured jail cell feels like an ominous black cloud hovering over his head, one that’s about to let loose a torrential storm.

He tries calling Scott one more time but it rings through until he ends up in voicemail again. His unease over the situation doubles at the sound of Scott’s cheery voice telling him to leave a message after the tone even though it’s not the first, or the second, or even the third time the other has forgotten to take his phone with him while attending his lectures. He’s worried, because Gerard is somewhere out there and nobody, especially him, wants a repeat of what happened with Kate.

Stiles doesn’t want anyone else to die because of him.

‘I can’t reach Boyd,’ Derek says suddenly as he hangs up and tries again.

His heart skips a beat and he can’t help the way his eyes follow Derek’s every move as he tracks a path back and forth the carpet in front of the window. He watches Derek attempt to connect a call two more times until suddenly, without any warning, the older man stops in the middle of his room, mouth agape and posture stiff even though the slack in his fingers is enough for his phone to slip out of his grip and tumble under the bed.

Stiles is up on his feet before he knows it, stopping a careful distance away from Derek whose breath is coming out short and whose eyes are wide and red and feral with his gaze focusing on the middle distance, completely inattentive to his surroundings.

‘What’s going on?’ He demands and watches as Derek’s throat clicks repeatedly over words that don’t seem to want to make itself heard. He doesn’t know what’s happening so he asks again until Derek’s eyes shift to meet his, skin pale and looking far too vulnerable.

‘Boyd is dead,’ he tells him, voice hoarse and expression pinched while Stiles’ stomach lurches at the news, his fear of losing more people renewed.

The cold press of terror in his gut comes back ten-fold, this time over Scott’s lack of reply from his earlier calls and text messages. He worries that calling Allison will give him the same result and he worries that whatever happened to Boyd is going to happen to them, too, or maybe it’s already happening.

It doesn’t matter that Scott and Allison are two and a half hours away by car from Beacon Hills – in the grand scheme of things a little distance never bothered Gerard from doing whatever he wanted.

His phone starts ringing in that instance and one look at the screen tells him that it’s Isaac calling him. When he picks up all he can hear is the other yelling for why Derek isn’t answering his phone and why his connection with Boyd is suddenly gone.

‘What the fuck is going on?’ Isaac shouts, his voice sounding strained and unsteady.

‘I don’t know,’ he says with a shake of his head as he crouches down beside his bed and stretches for Derek’s phone until he can reach it. A quick swipe at the screen tells him that there are four missed calls within seconds of each other, two from Erica and two from Isaac himself. ‘Find Erica and rendezvous at my house. Don’t try to look for Boyd,’ he tells him even though it pains him to say it but, the truth is, they can’t do anything until they’ve gathered everybody else to form a solid plan.

‘She’s not there and her window is wide open. I smell a lot of wolfsbane here and some blood.’

‘Whose?’ He asks just as Derek takes his phone and starts telling Isaac to run for cover and to avoid the main roads but to also steer clear of going too deeply into the preserve surrounding the town.

‘Stay on the line and get here as soon as you can,’ Derek orders just as his eyes flit over towards the window and Erica clambers through it not half a minute later without any shoes on, looking disheveled with her braided hair in complete disarray.

‘You didn’t tell me shit was going to hit the fan this soon!’ She shouts at the both of them as she tries to keep her tears, anger and fears at bay. ‘You told us to watch out, to buddy up; you didn’t tell us they’re already here!’

Erica is still in her pajamas of a loose shirt and thin shorts, grass stains on her knees and dirt between her toes. Her braid is coming apart and she looks ready to scream or cry or maybe even both. She’s shivering but he honestly doubts it’s from the cold but he offers her a jacket anyway, one she takes but folds in half and holds close to her chest instead.

Stiles catches Derek hanging up before making another call on his phone, only just starting to talk into it when Isaac is suddenly scratching his way in through his window, falling in an ungainly heap beside Erica and trembling along with her as he holds onto his phone tight in one hand. His eyes are wide and he looks pale but he takes Erica’s hand when it’s offered and neither of them let go.

‘Boyd can’t be dead,’ Isaac mutters under his breath repeatedly as his phone cracks under the pressure from a force greater than that of a human’s capability. Erica and Isaac’s joined hands are white at the knuckles and if it weren’t for their shared strength or fast-healing then it wouldn’t just be a broken phone they’d have to worry about.

Stiles returns his attention to Derek whose back is turned to them, and he can see the tension in his shoulders and the way his arm flexes as he squeezes his free hand into a tight fist. He can’t hear what Chris is saying but he knows the older man isn’t blaming Derek for whatever battle they’ve all unwittingly signed up for.

‘We can’t contact Scott or Allison,’ Stiles tells the others and he can barely keep the guilt out of his voice but Derek gives him a sharp look over his shoulder, eyes narrowed and fierce as though daring him to put the fault all on his shoulders. He doesn’t care what Derek thinks – the blame is all his.

‘They’re not even in Beacon Hills!’ Isaac outrages as he gets to his feet, pulling Erica up with him as they stare helplessly at the both of them.

‘We’re operating on worse case scenarios now,’ Stiles says with a shake of his head as Derek continues to stay on the phone with Chris. ‘Boyd is dead and we have to assume that Scott and Allison are both taken.’

‘Oh, my god,’ Erica says over and over again as she angrily rubs at the eyes as though it might stop the tears. ‘This is insane, this is so fucking insane. We’re not even over the shit that bitch put us through and now this?’

Derek abruptly hangs up with barely a word of goodbye as he runs out of Stiles’ room and thunders his way down the stairs. Stiles doesn’t know where the sudden shift in mood came from but Isaac and Erica are quick on his heels, just a few seconds behind before they’re also rushing their way towards the first level of the house.

He hears Derek’s voice first, calling out for Boyd, loud and desperate. He hurries his way after them towards the back of the house where the kitchen backdoor is wide open and all three of them are standing just outside, blood staining the woodwork, the steps, the welcoming mat, their shoes and, in Erica’s case, her bare feet.

Stiles barely has the presence of mind to run back upstairs and push the dresser away from the wall to pry at the loose wood hiding away his stockpile of weapons and ammo. He’s not sure if he’s got the right strain of wolfsbane on him and there’s a chance he might have to go through a good portion of the bullets he has before they find the right one to apply to Boyd’s injuries. He counted at least three bullet wounds and he hopes he has enough to help as he rushes back downstairs but not before grabbing a spare lighter from his desk drawer.

‘Isaac, get your lighter out; I need you to split the workload with me,’ he pants as he kneels down beside Boyd on the opposite side of Derek who’s still working on trying to get the bullets out. There are two shell casings lying in the blood next to him and he’s digging his fingers into Boyd’s thigh, dangerously close to the femoral artery, to pull out another one. ‘Erica, you take half and try to see which strain works.’

The most common type of wolfsbane used is generally monkshood but there are groups of hunters out there who like to experiment, combining different strains of wolfsbane together to give a bigger bang for their buck. It’s starting to become obvious after their third attempt at burning out the ash in Boyd’s body that this could be one of those cases, up until one of them starts to work more effectively than the rest.

‘Thank God,’ Isaac breathes out as Erica grabs a couple more bullets to empty out into her hand before burning it right in the middle of her palm and spreading it into the four bullet holes on Boyd’s chest, arm and leg. As soon as it’s done Derek tries to wake Boyd who’d remained unconscious since the moment he dropped in a dead heap on the steps of his back porch. It bodes ill for how well he’s faring.

‘How many were there,’ Derek repeats while Boyd’s head lolls around, his eyes barely focusing on the people around him as his body heals.

They’re all covered in various amounts of blood and Stiles doesn’t have to look down to know that his sweatpants are practically soaked in them. He keeps his fingers poised over Boyd’s weak pulse and holds his breath and tries to make sense of the words coming out thin and hoarse from his lips.

‘Four,’ he manages to say before slipping back into unconsciousness.

Stiles swears – if there are four hunters here in Beacon Hills then there has to be at least that many more where Allison and Scott are. He worries they aren’t just dealing with Gerard Argent leading a small team of hunters: he worries that they’re dealing with a man who’s cashing in all his favors and that, possibly, he’s got the whole San Francisco network backing him up.

He doesn’t know if they can make it out of this alive.

His phone chimes and he looks at it from where it’s lying in Boyd’s blood and catches an unknown number flashing across the screen. It’s with trepidation that he opens up the message and loads another photo, this time of a necklace he’d seen around Kate’s neck before it was passed down to encircle and choke Allison.

If they hadn’t been sure about either Allison or Scott before, they are now.

\-----

He wakes up on the floor of a jail cell – a squat little thing that takes him all of two large steps to walk across – and the whole place smells like old blood, stale piss, rust and a lingering stench of fear mixed with the barest hints of wolfsbane.

There’s a large door opposite the bars holding him in, spanning the entire length of the wall, and the sight of it confuses him because, honestly, why would anybody install a metallic sliding door where the fourth wall should be? Scott doesn’t pay the niggling question too much mind, which is his first mistake.

He doesn’t see what’s aimed at his back until he feels the stab and shock of electricity surging through his body, turning his legs into jelly. He falls into a spastic heap on the ground, his teeth clattering uncontrollably, tries to clear the sudden flash of color in his vision and breathe around the pain but he can’t.

The smell of wolfsbane intensifies, and the door is the last thing on his mind.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ayyyyy, I hope everybody had a good Easter break!!! With lots of chocolates and egg hunts and treats and sugar rushes and good weather and fun! I'm estimating about...11 chapters total? Give or take one or two? We'll see. XD


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I went off on a two day road trip and forgot to upload this chapter before I vamoosed outta the house. Whoops! Anyway~ ONWARD!

There’s a warm hand on his chest, rubbing soothing circles above his heart. He’s immediately transported back to a time where his grandma used to care for him when he’d fallen sick with a combination of a chesty flu and a runny nose, but that was years ago, back when he’d yet to hit his double digits and before he’d been given the bite.

He misses her, suddenly, and he doubts he’ll ever stop missing her but as he opens his eyes to the sight of Erica lying in bed beside him, who’s outside of her dark mascara, glossy red lips and artificial blush, wearing an oversized t-shirt with the collar slipped over one shoulder and oversized track pants slung low over an exposed hip, he also doubts he’s ever woken up to anything more beautiful than her.

Boyd smiles, and she returns the same shy look.

\-----

**Chapter 5**

\-----

The back porch is a literal bloody mess and smells strongly of burned cigarettes. John had expected to return home early from a long double-shift to find Stiles either working on his laptop or sleeping to make up for lost hours. What he hadn’t expected to find were bloody rags of torn clothing in a tied up plastic bag stuffed in the rubbish bin of his downstairs bathroom and a guest room occupied by not one, or even two, but three young adults on the small double bed.

Frankly, he’s amazed they managed to fit themselves on the mattress and still look comfortable with the arrangement even though Isaac looks to be on the verge of slipping off.

Stiles and Derek are caught red-handed in the middle of clean-up, figuratively speaking, but there’s still the odd smear of blood here and there on their clothes and on their bodies. Stiles is a mixture of guilt, fear and worry as he holds onto a dripping hose while Derek continues to keep up his usual neutral expression even though he’s kneeling on the stained wood with a wet dish rag in hand that’ll most likely be tossed away later.

At first, after seeing all that fresh blood, he’d been afraid to find Stiles bleeding on the floor, the laceration on his chest ripped wide open – a nightmare he’s had more than once – though, he can’t say this is all that much better. The blood on his son’s ruined pajama pants do little to stop the image of him strapped down on the gurney fighting for his life but John does his best to push the mental assault aside for more important business.

He doubts any amount of therapy with Morrell is going to stop them from coming. It’ll get better but it won’t ever go away.

‘I want to pretend I didn’t see anything but there’s too much going on and there are a lot of lives at stake, so,’ John doesn’t sigh but he can’t help the slow, tired exhale as he rubs the skin between his eyes, ‘I want you to explain to me what happened in the mere 6 hours I was gone.’

He watches Stiles exchange a look with Derek who only gives an unhelpful shrug and a single nod of his head. Eventually, Stiles turns his attention back to him and says, ‘Yeah, just let me hose down the rest of the porch first.’

‘Fine,’ he agrees and hopes Mrs. Wiltkinson has been too busy with her TV drama re-runs to look outside her window to what looks to be a bad Halloween setup even though it’s nowhere near the season for it.

John had been planning on making a quick bite of food to eat before heading off to bed but after seeing all that blood on the knees of Stiles’ sweatpants he’s not quite feeling up for it anymore. Instead, he goes into the kitchen and pours himself a small glass of scotch, then a little bit more, and considers whether he wants to take the whole bottle to keep him company at the dining table or not.

He shoves it back into its usual place in the cupboard instead, deciding he’ll need all his wits about him if he’s to survive the rest of their conversation.

It only takes Stiles fifteen more minutes before he’s back inside, a little wet and looking more than a little tired, but he dutifully pulls out his usual seat across from him and sits down, water-wrinkled hands tapping an idle pattern on the tabletop, leaving wet smudges in its wake. John expects Derek to come inside after him but a couple of minutes passes before he realizes that the other man won’t be joining them.

‘Your friends in the guest bedroom,’ John starts to question, idly playing with the rim of the glass as Stiles’ eyes flit over in the general direction of where Erica, Boyd and Isaac are.

Stiles draws in a deep breath and tells him, ‘Boyd was shot this morning.’

He jolts in alarm but he remembers the way all three of them were sprawled across the spare bed when he looked in through the open door. If Boyd was shot then it’s obvious he’s long since healed from it. If all that blood on the porch belonged to him, which there was much of, and if Boyd had been any normal human being, then it would’ve been more than enough to warrant admission into the hospital. It’s highly possible he wouldn’t even make it in time, just another DOA statistic.

‘And?’ John prompts, taking another long sip of scotch to calm his nerves. He knows his hands are shaking from a combination of far too much caffeine, too little sleep, too much nerves and dread boiling away in his stomach, but there’s a smudge of blood on the underside of Stiles’ chin that he hadn’t noticed before and now he can’t help but focus his eyes on. It’s not Stiles’, he prays and tries to convince himself, but he’s still not over the sight of his son bleeding out in the basement of the burned down and recently collapsed Hale house.

‘Allison and Scott aren’t picking up our calls,’ Stiles mutters quietly, as though he wants his words to be missed and barely heard. But his ears are keener than that and he knows that whatever Stiles is saying, he’s implying more.

He draws in a long breath and puts his half-finished glass down, but it rattles against the wood from the shake still in his fingers and he has to place them flat on the table to stop them fully.  ‘Here’s what we’re going to do,’ he starts as he pulls out the notepad from the inside lining of his jacket and begins to pen down a list, the first item being the arrangement of protection detail. ‘I’m going to call in the boys and I’m going to let them know what’s going on.’

‘What? No!’ Stiles shouts as he abruptly gets up, the legs of the chair screeching horribly against the polished wood of their dining room, almost toppling over but settling back down. ‘Dad, this is completely beyond what the police are capable of.’

‘Only because I’m the only person caught up on all things supernatural-related. Once the others have been informed then we have a better chance of implementing a system to better protect everybody in Beacon Hills,’ he’s not quite sure how to begin organizing it but he knows Chris Argent will be more than happy to consult with them.

‘I told you all of that in confidence,’ he says slowly, with only the slightest of tremors in his voice, though it doesn’t stop him from sounding betrayed. ‘This isn’t something you can just tell anybody.’

‘This isn’t just about you, Stiles, or about me. I’m trying to protect—’

‘I don’t need you to protect me.’

John’s eyes move of their own accord, zeroing in on where he knows Stiles will be scarred forever. When he next looks up, the look of nervous betrayal is gone from Stiles’ face and replaced with indignant anger instead.

‘What about Allison and Scott, then? What about them?’ John brings up, pen poised over the page just as he was trying to jot down the second point.

‘We’ve already told Chris what we think is happening.’

He doesn’t like where this conversation is heading. ‘I’m going to assume police involvement will be at its absolute minimum.’

‘Yes.’

‘This isn’t a good idea, Stiles.’

‘It’s not a question of whether it’s a good idea or not, but if you involve more people into this then you’re going to expose a lot more than the fact that Allison and Scott have been taken. We blow this out of proportion, we end up wasting time, and neither of them can afford that.’

‘What are you planning to do?’ He doesn’t want Stiles to do anything while he’s barely even half a month into his recovery period and the thought that he’ll willingly put himself in the middle of danger to find his friends while trying to fend off the return of Gerard makes him almost physically ill. John doesn’t want Kate’s psychopathic father to get anywhere near his son. It almost took everything in him not to assume the worst of both Chris and Allison – the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, after all.

‘What I’m trained to do,’ and it’s obvious from the way he says it that he doesn’t mean the six-months he spent in the academy.

Sometimes, John still wonders how much of Stiles made it back to him. It’s times like this that makes him feel his boy never made it back at all, and it’s moments like these that make him think of his wife and the broken promises laid out between them.

‘Duke it out as a vigilante?’ His voice resolutely does not crack. ‘This isn’t a movie or a TV show, Stiles; the hero doesn’t always win and come out on top.’

‘I never said I was a hero.’

His chest aches suddenly, because he can still remember his five-year old kid listing down “Batman” as what he wants to be when he grows up. In a way, he fulfilled that childhood wish but at a cost that took away more than just his innocence and his carefree smiles.

‘How long ago did you find out?’ John asks, feeling incredibly exhausted as he tries to ward off the oncoming headache.

‘We started calling everybody at around 7 o’clock; everybody but Allison, Scott and Boyd picked up. It wasn’t until maybe a quarter-past eight that Boyd showed up on our doorstep looking like death warmed over.’

A quick glance at the clock tells him that it’s been just over three hours since then and he can’t help the rising fury at the fact Stiles deliberately chose not to tell him; hoping to clean up the mess before it’s noticed by metaphorically sweeping it under the rug. ‘You were never going to inform me.’

Stiles, though sheepish, remains resolute as he shakes his head. ‘I wanted to keep you out of it.’

He narrows his eyes and can’t help but snark back at him, ‘Because ignorance is bliss.’

‘Things were better before you found out.’

‘Better?’ John almost shouts, his feet firm on the floor ready to push away from the chair.

‘It was better but it didn’t make it easier,’ he argues, breath short as if it took a monumental amount of effort to say those words out loud.

All those times Stiles looked as if he was swallowing down a secret – the stilted lulls in conversation not just within the office but also at home – it’s only now that John is able to match it to what it actually is. Ever since he found Scott, Allison, Isaac and Erica behaving bizarrely at the burning building of where Derek Hale lived, the revelation of Stiles’ double-life is both more than he imagined and worse than he anticipated.

He doesn’t know what to do anymore. He doesn’t know how to protect his son that doesn’t want, or need, his protection. He can’t help as a father, but he has more than enough power behind his badge and absolutely no shame in abusing his authority as a sheriff.

‘I don’t want you to go after them.’

‘Dad,’ he fumes.

‘I lost you once.’

Stiles chokes on his next words, his expression crumpling in pain.

‘I almost lost you a second time,’ he stands resolutely, eyes unflinching as he meets Stiles’.  ‘I refuse to let there be a third. Gerard is obviously a dangerous man; more than I’d originally anticipated, and if he’s somehow managed to get Allison and Scott then it’s not a farfetched guess to assume he’s going to come after you, too.’

‘Don’t waste time, dad.’

‘Don’t you dare tell me that keeping you safe is a waste of my time,’ he yells and feels momentary guilt at the look of shock on Stiles’ face before it disappears quick as it came. ‘I’m going to make a call,’ he continues in a normal voice, ‘and we’re going to set up rosters to keep an eye on the house and an eye on you.’

‘I don’t need a protection detail on our doorstep.’

‘Good thing it’s not up to you to decide that,’ he picks up his glass and dumps the rest of his drink down the sink. He’s got calls to make and it’s obvious the both of them are going to need a lot of space to deal with their new predicament. Derek has yet to come inside but he’s not foolish enough to think the man didn’t hear every single word that was said. Whether or not Derek is for or against what’s already been decided isn’t up for discussion.

Stiles looks positively livid when he passes him again on his way out of the kitchen and it’s not that he’s adding insult to injury but he wants to make this absolutely clear: ‘Your friends are welcome to stay; to come and go as they please but you are under house-arrest from this day forward,’ he tells him just as he pulls out his phone to start dialing in the number for Jones and rope him into doing a couple extra hours of work.

‘You’re wasting my time,’ Stiles snaps just as he’s walking away.

He stops, and feels his heart skip and stutter with him at the tone of Stiles’ voice.

‘When you were bleeding out in the back of the ambulance you barely had any left,’ John won’t lie and say that it doesn’t sting to hear his son talk to him that way, and he knows he’s pushing Stiles away by forcefully taking away his freedom, but the most important fact is that he doesn’t care, not as long as Stiles is alive to push back.

With the way things are going Stiles is more likely to squander than savor the numbers left to his name but John is going to make damn sure he’ll do whatever it takes to preserve the rest.

\--

It’s been a little over 30 hours since the news of Gerard’s disappearance and John has only slept for five of them, but he’s run on less fuel than that before; he can make do.

Stiles hasn’t spoken to him since their last conversation and outright refuses to be in the same room as him. It’s not out of the question to think that he’d refused to be in the same building altogether but he’s more or less chosen to confine himself to his bedroom instead. There’s a part of John that think it’s outrageously childish of Stiles to behave this way but there’s the other part of him that takes giddy pleasure from it. The silent treatment reminds him of the boy who used to act out and who’d throw tantrums when he didn’t manage to get things to go his way.

However, the fact still remains; Gerard is on the run, Stiles is in danger, Allison and Scott have been reported missing and there is a group of people within Beacon Hills attempting to kill or severely harm Derek and the Betas of his pack.

Undoubtedly, he has a feeling all of his hair is going to grey before the week is out, and that’s not even including whatever else is going on with his deputies and Stiles’ former training officer.

He’s not oblivious to the looks his co-workers have been giving him as of late but at least Elliot is out keeping an eye on the house and all its occupants so it’s one less look to worry about. However, it doesn’t stop the tingle of suspicion going up and down his spine whenever he catches sight of Jones and Rodgers watching him. They’re obvious about it but John doesn’t want to be the one to make that jump – he’ll wait for them to find him first.

Still, their eyes constantly follow him whenever he makes his way across the station floor and it nags him.

The deaths of the two people who’d been in the prison transport vehicle with Gerard Argent as their precious cargo make it into the news. Condolences to the families and friends of the victims are shared over the media release but it does little to help ease the pain of loss. Pictures and descriptions as well as the number for the police hotline for anything and everything to do with Gerard are also posted up on various bulletin boards, front page news, and is mentioned on every broadcast at least twice. The amount of false leads they receive are hard to sift through, always is, but it’s better to get wrong information than none at all.

It’s not long into the shift before there’s a knock on the door and John looks up from his work, red marker in hand, to find Rodgers standing at the threshold with Jones flanking him, shutting the door behind them after they’re both inside.

‘Any updates on Gerard Argent?’ He asks as he goes back to his case files, trying to line up the “sightings” they’ve gathered from the hotline onto the map. He rules out the one from all the way in Maryland with a large “X” because not only is it impossible for the older man to make the flight, what with his face plastered on practically every news channel, the time doesn’t match up with the moment he disappeared either. It would take considerably more than 30 hours to get there by car.

Rodgers shakes his head, looking aged despite the recent dye-job, as he runs a hand through his hair, messing up the gel work as he goes. ‘Still sifting through the tips we’ve got on hand but we’re not here to talk to you about that.’

‘Well, if it’s not a top priority then we’ll table it for now,’ he tells them as he crosses off another false lead that contradicts with the facts they’ve already gathered.

‘This isn’t something we can just drop, John, not when you’re hiding things from the rest of the team.’

He stops in his work as he eyes the men in his office, their tone full of accusation, and he can’t stop the unbridled anger building up in his system. ‘Excuse me?’

‘The missing files,’ Jones interrupts with a narrowed-eyed stare, ‘the ones about Dylan O’Brien; they’ve gone and disappeared.’

‘Disappeared or misplaced?’ He shakes his head and changes the focus, dropping the marker onto the table. ‘O’Brien barely had anything on him, unless you want to count the handful of parking tickets he got for leaving his car right outside the station,’ he says as he switches off the monitor and flips close the files laid across his desk all the while trying to separate the teenager they’re talking about to the man they’re all working with. ‘Why were you looking for it? His records should’ve been sealed.’

‘Fine,’ Jones concedes with the slightest of aggrieved huffs, ‘say that his records are sealed and we can’t access it without plausible reason, what about the fact that all of the hardcopy folders regarding what little information we have on him are gone?’

‘Have you checked between all the desks? It’s not an uncommon thing to happen.’

‘John, we know he’s your boy,’ Rodgers snaps as he stalks over to the desk until he’s looming over it, his voice lowered and gaze firm, ‘but you’re _deliberately_ tampering with evidence and we know it’s not something Ms. Argent did with the intention of framing you.’

‘The dates don’t line up,’ Jones intervenes easily, ‘and for all the paranormal activity TV programs I watch even I wouldn’t chalk it up to “ghosts in the machine”.’ he finishes, his tone and posture a juxtaposition to Rodgers’.

John actually starts laughing, not just because of their unintentional “good-cop, bad-cop” routine but also for the mentioning of “paranormal activities”. His reaction is obviously not one that either of the men had been expecting and their traded looks with one another tells John as much as he quickly calms down. He settles back in his seat and refuses to admit anything over what they’re accusing him of.  After all, he can still claim plausible deniability.

He gets a lucky break in the form of static coming over the radio transmitter, drawing all of their attention away from the conversation as Elliot’s voice breaks through the buzz and crackle.

‘I think I just saw Stiles disappear into the woods, running off into the goddamn sunset.’

 _So much for a lucky break_ , John thinks as he grabs the radio clipped onto his belt and pushes down the button with a little too much force, ‘You _think_ you saw Stiles disappear into the woods?’ He repeats through gritted teeth and hopes to God and Claudia that it’s not true. But knowing Stiles, nothing short of handcuffing him to the radiator will get him to stay in one place for long. When he sets his mind to something, there’s little to nothing that will actually stop him from doing it, even when he was a child.

‘With Hale.’

‘You’re sure?’ He asks as he stands up and pulls his jacket back on, already moving around the desk past the two men in his office for the door, keys ready and on hand.

‘No. The hood was up and I didn’t get a clear look. It could be Lahey for all I know.’

They have the same body type – tall, lithe, broad shoulders and narrow waists – so he’s not surprised that, from a distance, it’s hard to differentiate the two apart. ‘I’m on my way. Stay where you are; don’t leave your car.’

‘Yes, Sir.’

The radio switches off just as Rodgers tries to block his path on his way towards the station doors but he manages to sidestep him and tell him at the same time, ‘We’ll talk later.’ A part of him hopes they won’t bring it up again but with his luck going downhill and snowballing out of control, he highly doubts it’ll lighten up. For now, though, he has to go back to his house and hope Stiles won’t test his patience.

Unfortunately, it’s an empty home he returns to and his fear over losing Stiles for possibly the third time grows ten-fold.

Elliot joins him by the front door, hand resting on his belt next to the radio, staring into the quiet home with a calculating look as if he’s searching for more than just for clues as to where Stiles decided to run off to. It’s not much longer after that another police cruiser parks itself behind their cars and both Jones and Rodgers exit the vehicle with the same look as they’d worn back in the station.

‘What is it?’ He demands, feeling frayed around the edges as he takes in his co-workers, feeling surrounded by the men who’re supposed to be his partners.

‘We figured you’d want some help picking up clues as to where Stiles has gone,’ Rodgers replies as he turns his attention to the other deputy, ‘whereabouts did you see them disappear off to?’

Elliot points a finger to the back of the house to the trees beyond the back porch. ‘They shot off in that direction, but they could’ve changed course once they’ve gone deep enough to lose any eyes on them.’

‘You’d think the kid would lay low after getting shot,’ Jones says with a shake of his head with a worried expression and a gnash in his teeth.

‘He’s never been one to take kicks when he’s down,’ John is scared for Stiles, and furious at the same time. It feels as though all of his plans for keeping his son safe are unraveling right before his eyes, pushing him back to square one, but he doesn’t think he can figure out a better plan, not when he hasn’t got any time left to work with. John decides to put an order out for all patrolling units to be on the lookout for Stiles and any of his friends, after that he turns back to the others and tells them to prioritize on locating Gerard Argent, ‘leave Stiles to me.’

‘We’ll talk later,’ Rodger repeats his earlier words with a nod before heading off with Elliot while Jones stays behind.

John feels on edge, even though he considers Jones to be one of his oldest friends, but he can’t help tensing as the other man lays a hand over his shoulder, squeezing once in solidarity. ‘He’s a good person, disregarding his sketchy past and missing years. None of us cared about his records but they’ve gone missing and we can’t overlook that,’ he tells him before leaving, a warning clear in his words as he closes the door behind him.

A dry laugh escapes him as he mutters beneath his breath, ‘I hate irony.’

The house is eerily silent and he’s immediately reminded of the years he spent alone, mourning the death of his wife and drowning himself in cheap alcohol over the loss of his only child. But he refuses to turn to the bottle, not when he needs a clear mind and a clear direction to go.

He doesn’t turn when the door opens up behind him again, thinking it’s just Jones unable to leave things well enough alone, but he catches a glimpse of a square-shaped shadow from the corner of his eyes and unintentionally breathes in as the cloth is pressed down over his mouth. There’s a sharp snap on the back of his knees and he falls, feels three muscled arms holding his hands in harsh angles and choking him with the sickly sweet stench. His vision blurs, the room spins and the last thing he registers is the unsightly mould gathering around the crack of his ceiling in the corner of the living room.

\--

His back and neck hurts, a sign he’s getting too old to get away with sleeping in a chair instead of a bed, but when he tries to stretch he feels the rope around his wrists, ankles and chest pull taut. He jerks to full awareness and regrets the abrupt movement, feeling sick and dizzy from it. With the exception of the light shining above his head the rest of the room is bathed in shadows. His eyesight isn’t what it used to be, either, and it takes him longer than he likes for them to readjust enough to catch the barest of shapes hiding beyond the light. It takes him longer still before he realizes the shape is human and all too familiar.

The old man is sitting behind what looks to be a desk that seems as if it was taken from a classroom. He’s holding something in his hands and every once in a while John catches a faded glint of metal followed by the quiet snap of the safety being clicked off.

There’s no telling how many hours has passed since he was last home or whether he’s still even in Beacon Hills or not. The room is lacking windows and John guesses there’s only one exit and that way is being blocked by Gerard Argent.

‘You received a few nasty bumps on the ride here,’ Gerard drawls out as he tables the gun and leaves the barrel facing John, ‘but that’ll be the least of your problems.’

‘Save me the villainous monologue,’ he says flatly as he tests the strengths of the ropes but they’re snug around his wrists and the continual tugging only makes them grow tighter.

‘Werewolf sympathizers are almost as bad as those wretched beasts themselves,’ he spits as he gets up, shoulders hunched and looking older, as if he’d been gone for a decade instead of just four years.

‘They’re far more human than you,’ he wants to call him a monster but he has a feeling Gerard would get a kick out of that.

The old man laughs anyway, loud and malicious, as he picks up his gun and retreats further and further away until there’s the smallest sliver of light coming into the room. John can see the door but it’s far beyond his current reach.

‘You’ll change your mind in a minute,’ he says sincerely, his face illuminated by the corridor’s light and John doesn’t think he imagined the look of wild cruelty in the man’s eyes.

The door shuts again and he immediately begins to try his hand at loosening the knots tying him to the metal chair. It’s only now that he noticed the legs are bolted to the floor with multiple scratches lining the metal that look not too dissimilar to claws. He tries to breathe around the building panic as he eyes the brown, rust-colored stains surrounding him in a dried puddle.

His wrists and ankles hurt, the ropes chafing more and more as he shuts his eyes against the growing pain to push and pull. He just needs a small gap, enough to free any one of his wrists but before he can get any further on trying to make good on his escape, the doors open up again to allow entrance to three shadows; two men dragging in a third.

They throw the body down in front of him, the head cracking harshly against the concrete, and it’s with a lurch that he realizes it’s Scott; unconscious, bruised and looking as if he’d been beaten to within an inch of his life. The men quickly retreat before he can shout profanities at them and he doesn’t think oddly of it as he tries, futilely, to shuffle himself forward to get a better look on the visible parts of Scott he can see.

‘Scott,’ he calls out as he eyes the claws. His hair is matted down with blood and sweat and he reeks of it, too. The clothes on him are torn in several places and falling apart in others. John shouts his name again only to hear, instead of a voice, a growl in answer.

The boy’s movements are sluggish, pained, and with the occasional full-body jerks that can’t be controlled, but it’s not the blood or the injuries that worries John anymore; it’s the bloodshot look in his eyes and the animalistic twist in his face.

‘Scott, listen to me,’ he tries again, softer this time, but his voice is lost over the loud roar as claws slice through his clothes and into his skin, tearing through meat and muscle and re-coloring the floor around them.

Through it all, he doesn’t blame Scott. Not even once.

\-----

He opens the door expecting to find the police on the other side, faces grim as they inform him the old news concerning his daughter having been taken. It’s Stiles and Derek, which is both the right and wrong assumption to make, but he doesn’t waste time with pleasantries before letting them inside and shutting the door behind them.

The opening to their conversation isn’t with words but simply a text message. Stiles hands the small device over, smudged with dried blood in the cracks, and he feels his heart sink at the photo image of the familiar piece of jewelry adorned with the family crest.

Wordlessly, Stiles scrolls down and he can’t stop the lurch in his stomach as he reads the words: _Blood is thicker than water, but that does not exempt one from paying the price of betrayal._

If Chris had any doubts as to Gerard’s involvement then this is all the proof he needs to expel them in a blink of an eye. He’s convinced, and he’ll do whatever it takes to bring Allison back home, even if it means killing the man he once considered his father.

 


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We’re starting this chapter in the missing hours that John disappeared. Neither Stiles nor Derek knows what happened and will go on as if nothing’s changed. Much.

They don’t discuss it, simply because Derek doesn’t know what to say and because Stiles always smells like anger, fear and shame whenever he calms down from another panic attack. After seeing him go through two it’s easy for Derek to pick out the early signs.

It begins with a stutter in his heartbeat, an uptick that doesn’t slow or settle and it’s followed by a pale look in his face, growing paler as the seconds go by. It goes on to a wheeze in his lungs, a hitch in his breathing, as though there’s something physically clogging up his throat or squeezing up his airways.

In all the years Derek has known Stiles he’s never seen the younger man experience panic attacks before, or in such frequencies, and to see Stiles struggling through trying to draw in a decent breath makes him feel altogether useless and frightened that something as small as this is capable of bringing Stiles to his knees.

But Derek learns, and he finds that a grounding touch and a simple order to “breathe” is all Stiles needs to come out of his panic attacks, to calm down and to move on. It’s the best he can offer, and it’s the only thing he can do.

\-----

**Chapter 6**

\-----

The numbers from the burner phones, Stiles finds, both have the same area code residing somewhere in San Francisco and as much as he is loathed to return to that city he doesn’t have a choice, not if he needs to find Allison and Scott and bring them back home alive. He has an idea where they might be but it makes his stomach churn at the thought of where they’re both holed up, held against their will, in a place Stiles grew up thinking of as Hell.

‘I have to make a call,’ Chris says as he turns to leave them in the study, face strained but eyes determined.

‘For some favors?’ Stiles asks as he looks up from the enlarged map of downtown San Francisco and a printout of the street view on the apartment block where he used to live. Four years later it’s even more rundown than he remembers and he isn’t surprised to see a condemned notice stuck on the graffiti-splattered front door leading into what used to be the main foyer. Even so, despite that it’s fenced off from the public, he doubts the building is truly empty.

‘Something like that,’ the older man answers as he brings his phone up to his ear and walks away, leaving the door open behind him as he goes. Stiles can’t hear either sides of the conversation but he trusts Derek will let him know if it’s anything they need to ponder over. For now, they both continue on trying to work out a plan of action.

‘You used to live here?’ Derek points at a blueprint of the building, detailing all the entries and exits via fire-escapes and underground sewer systems. There are only nine levels available as printouts even though there are two extra basement levels not registered in the plan, having been done without permissions gathered. Stiles has to give a rough sketch from memory, all harsh lines and sharp angles, and even though he hasn’t really thought about that hellhole in years he can still remember most of the details if not all of it.

‘Seventh floor,’ he tells him as he goes through the pile and pulls out the floor plan wedged between two other pages and jabs the tip of a marker pen to a room furthest away from the elevator and the stairs. ‘Not the best living conditions but you eventually learn to adapt.’

When he was younger he once compared the apartment building to a castle, a dilapidated one at that, where his room was located in the second tallest tower guarded and patrolled regularly by a nest of dragons. The worst rooms, though, were underground and he truly thought of them as dungeons.

And that’s where he knows Allison and Scott are both held captive. It’s not so much an inkling as it is the undeniable truth – he’s been down there and he’s intimately familiar with the processes and goings-on in those two levels.

‘We kept the wolves we don’t kill here,’ he explains as he shows Derek the sketched row of cellblocks that he recalls are barely more than 6 by 6 feet wide. There’s a long corridor along one side of the floor plan that leads to a set of stairs and on the fourth wall are large metal doors that lead to a big, empty block of space.

‘What’s in this room?’

It’s not a room. ‘Are you familiar with what the Roman Empire did for entertainment?’ He asks as he turns his eyes on Derek in wait for the shifts in his expressions.

It’s a bad memory he’d rather suppress to the furthest part of his mind but he had grown up in that kind of environment for over half of his life – some things can’t be easily forgotten, no matter how hard he tries.

‘They pit them against each other?’ Derek’s tone is a mixture of anger, shock and bewilderment.

He nods, and even now he can still recall with vivid clarity the screams and howls of each person they drug to the point of incoherency and make them fight to their deaths. ‘They used to make me watch and learn,’ he tells him as he points at the walkway that’s about three-quarters of the way up from the ground with bulletproof glass reinforced with wire mesh to keep the wolves out. ‘I was so stupid; I used to think they let the winner go but their prize turned out to be nothing but a bullet straight to the head.’

Sometimes, if Gerard were in a particular mood, he’d be the one to land the killing blow. Not with a gun but with a sword that Stiles had barely been able to properly lift until he was thirteen years old. Even then, he could only hold on for a few minutes before the strain in his muscles became too much.

‘You were just a kid.’

 _So were you_ , Stiles wants to say but instead shakes his head as he places both pages of the basement levels side by side. ‘They’re both here somewhere; separated, most likely. Allison will be in one of the interrogation rooms.’

Chris scoffs as he re-enters the study, ‘That’s one way of putting it,’ he says as he slips his phone into his pocket and joins them back at the table.  ‘Don’t need to sugarcoat the truth for us, Stiles.’

‘It’s a fine line, I admit, between interrogation and torture, but we’ve crossed the lines so many times that it might as well not even be there,’ he ignores the look Derek is giving him and keeps his eyes focused on Chris instead. ‘Any luck on those favors?’

The older man shakes his head as he tells them, ‘We’re on our own, but word’s going around that Gerard has assembled a small team of eight people split down the middle to tackle two different objectives.’

‘Taking Allison and Scott as one objective.’

‘Killing the pack and I as the other,’ Derek intercedes with a small scowl.

Chris nods, ‘They can’t tell me much more than that but if I know my father then we can be sure he’s got more planned than just kidnapping and eradication.’

‘We’re not going to get anywhere on guess-work so this is what we’re going to do; this is our way in,’ Stiles begins a rough plan as he points at the first basement level to the boiler room that also has a maintenance hatch. ‘But to get there we’ll have to go in through the sewers which we can access from the underpass about six blocks away. We’ll be breaking a few locks and bypassing a few rudimentary security systems but it’s not something we haven’t done before,’ and then he turns to Derek, ‘we’ll mostly be relying on you and your senses to tell us whether it’s clear or not.’

‘I might not be able to differentiate that many people. More than ten and the heartbeats will just turn into white noise.’

‘This is just one plan. Do you have any suggestions?’ He asks Chris, knowing he ought to give the older man some say considering that they’re trying to get back his daughter.

‘I’m not familiar with any parts of that building, let alone San Francisco; it’s all on you for getting us in.’

‘No pressure, then,’ Stiles quirks the corner of his lip up in a facsimile of a smirk. ‘Give me an hour and I’ll refine the plan. The sooner we prepare ourselves, the sooner we can make way towards San Francisco and the sooner we can get to Allison and Scott.’

‘One hour,’ Chris repeats as he begins to straighten up the papers on his desk, eyes lingering on the first basement level to the square block of rooms where it’s assumed Allison will be held.

‘Who else is coming with us?’ Stiles asks as he and Derek both make their way out of the study and out of the house. ‘Or are you going to get them to hold down the fort?’

‘They have to stay, not just for Boyd but for everybody else, too,’ he replies as he pulls out the keys to the car and unlocks it with a click of a button, sliding into the driver seat and waiting for Stiles to get in before turning the engine over.

‘The hospital and the police station are probably the two safest places in Beacon Hills right now,’ although he doesn’t mention the hacked systems within the police department which almost resulted in his dad losing his job, and worse, his reputation, or the fact that Erica’s mum died in her hospital bed – Kate was an anomaly and practically suicidal in her mission for revenge. ‘Get us to the safe house; we’ll need to stock up on some things before we hit the road.’

Derek signals and turns out into the street easily, leaving the suburban streets behind a little too quickly in his haste to move out. A cursory glance at the speedometer tells Stiles more than what Derek is willing to show and there’s a part of him that wants to let it go – he’s only 5 miles over – but there’s the other part of him that tells him they need to be careful, and lay low. ‘I’m supposed to be on lock-down; if we get pulled over because you’ve literally got a heavy foot then I’d rather walk than waste time over paperwork at the station.’ To his relief, Derek eases off the accelerator as they turn into a street leading to the more rural side of the county, mostly trees along both sides of the road with long, rough paths leading up to old houses with enough garden space to fit two more residential homes on the same property.

It’s a more isolated part of Beacon Hills, quieter with little to no traffic. There’s a car heading their direction and slow going but Stiles ignores it in favor of pulling out his phone. There’s a message he hadn’t noticed earlier and he can’t help the slightest of upticks in his heartbeat as he takes in the unknown number, another one from San Francisco, and opens up to find a cropped image of the Beacon Hills Sheriff’s badge.

‘Holy shit,’ he swears under his breath and looks up just in time to see the other car abruptly switch into their lane barely more than 50 yards away from them and hear a loud rev of an engine. Stiles braces his hands on the dash in front of him as Derek simultaneously brakes and swerves the car away from a head-on collision. All his common sense tells him it’s a bad move but it’s hard to think straight when there’s another vehicle trying to make one with Derek’s Camaro.

The screech of brakes is deafening and the harsh jostle of the tires leaving the asphalt makes Stiles’ shoulder impact against the door, his head cracking once on the window. They both careen into the ditch instead, the hood of the car crumpling against a thick tree trunk with a large enough force to set off all the airbags.

His head hurts. His ears and chest hurts. His hands are shaking and he can’t find his phone anywhere. There’s a muffled noise on his left and he feels more than he sees when the seatbelt suddenly gives way and he’s slanting across the center console because of the weird angle of which they’ve crashed from.

Derek leans over his body, claws out and eyes red, raining blood on Stiles’ clothes as he pushes the door open with a hard shove and gives Stiles an equally hard shove out of the totaled car.

‘Run. We have to run,’ Derek says breathlessly as he holds a hand against his ribs and simultaneously tries to limp and drag Stiles along, further and further into the preserve away from the road.

There are people shouting behind them and it’s not until he hears the tell-tale _snick_ passing in the small space between their bodies that he realizes the people behind them are Hunters and that they’re _shooting_ at them.

Stiles wipes at the sweat stinging his eye but finds his hands coming away red with blood. He feels breathless, nauseated, but forges on as Derek continues to pull him in random directions, weaving this way and that in order to disorient their pursuers. Stiles can’t help but feel disoriented himself as he tries to keep up with the speed of their run, gaining momentum as Derek’s limp heals to practically nothing, although he’s still holding a hand to his ribs as if it’s all he has to keep them where they are.

They burst through the tree line and onto incoming traffic. For a moment Stiles is bewildered because Derek should’ve known better than to involve civilians. He definitely should’ve known better than to involve the police.

‘Freeze!!’ Two of the officers shout as they stand behind their opened doors and aim their guns at them.

They can’t stop, though. His mind is whirring in all directions, and it’s not until he catches the familiar dispatch number on the police cruiser that he realizes its Rodgers and Elliot, looking at them with a mixed look of horror and fierce determination.

‘Shit, is that an arrow?!’ Elliot shouts as he stares at Derek with wide eyes, his gun lowering ever so slightly as he takes in the sight.

Stiles notices it, too. Two of them sticking out of Derek’s back and coating the leather jacket in thick rivers of black.

‘Get it in the car, get in the car!!’ Rodgers shouts as he changes trajectory and redirects his attention to where both Derek and he had come through the preserve. They can all hear the shouts now, coming closer, and Elliot quickly unclips his radio transmitter to start calling in for backup.

‘We have civilians under attack, both injured, we need assistance. I repeat, we have civilians under— _Stiles_!!’

They’re both running again because it’s all they can do. Neither of them can afford to get the police involved anymore than they already are and if the Hunters have any brains about them then they should’ve known to back off the second they stumbled across a patrolling unit.

He can still hear both of his colleagues calling out to him, to both of them, but there’s an unsettling amount of cotton building up in his ears and he can barely focus on keeping one foot in front of the other. He spares a moment of worry that they’ll call in his dad but there’s an uncomfortable stitch in his side and an even worse pain blossoming across his chest that takes precedence over everything else. The shirt he’d worn when they left the house had been a plain grey in color but is now bordering on black. The sight alone is enough to send Stiles’ into an even worse state of panic.

‘Breathe,’ Derek snaps as he continues to pull him along, righting Stiles every time he trips over a tree root, knees shaking from exertion.

Eventually, they make it into the industrial park after miles and miles of almost constant running, to a mostly deserted area of Beacon Hills. Stiles can hardly breathe but he continues to take in one wheezy inhale after another as Derek leads the way again, slower this time, taking him by the arm. It feels like they’re both going around in circles, up and down and all around. His head is spinning and he feels sick in his guts, made even worse by the stench of old oil, decay and fumes surrounding the entire abandoned lot.

He trips again and this time he can’t stop his knees from shaking as Derek holds him up.

‘We’re almost there,’ Derek tells him, his tone a combination of concern and desperation. ‘It’s just in the next building, come on.’

With more effort than he’d like, he forces himself to stand fully on his own. He can’t help being sluggish, dragging his feet along as they eventually make it to a steel door held shut with a broken padlock. It’s not until they’ve got the door swinging open that he remembers the set of stairs they’ll both have to traverse down to get to the abandoned subway cart and he can barely suppress the groan. They make their way down, inch by grueling inch, and it’s with relief that Stiles collapses on the very bottom of the stairs now that he’s no longer in danger of breaking his neck trying to get to ground level.

Derek leaves him sitting there, already heading towards the subway carriage with the slightest drag and stumble of his feet. It’s not until he emerges from inside carrying two boxes of their version of a first-aid kit that Stiles finally notices the pale sheen on the older man’s face, looking dead on his feet as he settles in front of Stiles and clumsily looks through the items for whatever it is he needs.

‘Turn around,’ Stiles tells him and waits for the other to do as he said before placing one firm hand on his shoulder, squeezing once, and wrapping a hand around the bolt. He gives a count of up to three before he pulls.

Derek doesn’t make a sound but his entire body grows tense and he bows over in pain as Stiles throws the arrow to the side and moves on to pull out the second, his fingers slipping once before he has to wrap the bolt with the hem of his jacket to help with the blood. It’s deeper than the first by maybe an inch more and this time Derek can’t hold back his howl.

‘Take off your jacket. How are your ribs?’ He asks belatedly and watches as the older man draws in one heaving breath and painstakingly pulls off his outer garment. Derek’s back, when Stiles lifts up the shirt, is tattooed with lines of black going around in all directions and he knows with the amount of running they’ve both done the older man hasn’t got more than an hour left before the wolfsbane reaches his heart and stops it from beating again.

They use the same type of wolfsbane that worked on Boyd but they find that it’s not healing Derek at all. Stiles curses under his breath as he burns one strain after another, going through their stash too quickly for comfort. They don’t know which strains to work with and it takes trial and error before they find the right one to apply to both wounds.

Derek looks deathly pale and for a moment Stiles can’t help but worry about the others. ‘They don’t think you’re dead, right?’

‘No. The connection we had with Boyd became so frazzled and disjointed that it was easy to assume he was killed.’

‘Where’s your phone?’ He asks as he slowly pulls off his own jacket, grimacing when he finds that his shirt has decided to stick onto his body like a second skin. ‘Break it before they trace our GPS.’ He can’t find his own phone so he’s going to assume he either lost it in the chase or it’s somewhere in the foot well of the Camaro.

Derek wordlessly takes his phone out of his pocket and throws it to the nearest adjacent wall, the plastic and screen shattering at the impact and showering the littered floor with small metallic pieces and now-useless technology. ‘We’ve got one-third of an hour left – we need to move.’

‘Does this look like I need stitches?’ Stiles can’t see the head wound without a mirror but it won’t stop bleeding and it hurts every time he gets too close to the cut. It feels inflamed but he knows he doesn’t have a concussion.

Small mercies.

‘No,’ Derek says as he douses a cotton ball with a generous splash of antiseptic before bringing it up to his head. Stiles can’t help the initial flinch but he soldiers on as Derek cleans up the cut while he tends to the reopened wound on his chest.

‘I think this definitely needs stitches,’ he grumbles as he goes through the first-aid kit for a needle and thread. It’s not as bad as he’d expected but he’ll still need about six to close it up. It takes him a while, with clumsy fingers and the unhelpful shake in his body, during which Derek has gone off to look through the rest of their hidey holes for a stash of spare clothes. Stiles ends up giving himself ten stitches because it’s been too long since he practiced the art of suturing. By the time he’s done Derek’s already changed into a new shirt, although he’s back in his ruined jacket, and he’s got a change of clothes ready for Stiles as well, a plain white t-shirt and a thin grey jacket.

They put all of their dirty clothes in an old metal drum, along with the broken pieces of Derek’s phone, the two bolts and the used items from the first-aid kit they raided before burning it all.

‘We need to get to the safe house. I’ve got a couple of burner phones stashed there and we need to fill the others in on what happened before we leave. Our hour’s up.’

They’re running low on time and Stiles has a bad feeling they’re not the only ones running out of it.

\--

The safe house isn’t exactly a _safe_ house. It’s more like an underground bunker that’s been long since out of use and has been commandeered by Derek and his Betas instead. At first, it had just been a place to store weapons they got from every Hunter they come across and pried from their fingers gone stiff due to rigor mortis. It wasn’t until Stiles came along that he decided to make it into a work station of sorts for emergencies only.

This is one such emergency.

‘Here,’ Stiles throws a burner phone in Derek’s direction and slips another one into his own pocket along with two more handheld devices. ‘Contact the others. We’re not on DEFCON 1 but we’re getting close to it,’ he says as he starts stockpiling on a satchel of mountain ash, guns, knives, a modified taser and a pepper spray. He exchanges the jacket he’s currently wearing for a Kevlar vest, one that will afford him some amount of protection against bullets and bolts aimed for his body. Then he pulls on a different kind of jacket, one with pockets lining the inside he can hide another knife in. He trades in his sneakers for a hardier pair of boots and slips another dagger between the straps before tightening it up and stomping once on the floor to make sure nothing slips.

Derek sounds as if he’s getting into an argument with the others but he leaves it for the older man to handle as he pulls out the phone again, fingers hovering over the number pad indecisively. He makes up his mind and inputs a string of numbers he learned to memorize within the first half year of regaining back his life.

‘Hello?’ A scared voice greets him.

‘Melissa,’ he starts to say and immediately there’s a sigh of relief from her end as she fires one question after another, all of them involving her son, Scott.

‘I should’ve known something was wrong when he didn’t call in at lunch time,’ her voice breaks at the end as she pulls in a shaky gasp of air and begs, ‘Please tell me you’ll help, please tell me you’ll find him.’

‘We will,’ he promises, his resolve solidifying in the face of her tears. He can’t afford to doubt himself, and he can’t afford to waste more time. ‘Stay at the hospital; don’t go home, but if you do then keep your bat with you at all times.’

This prompts a watery laugh out of her. ‘You’ll never let me live that down, will you?’

He smiles into the phone before saying goodbye, listens as she wishes him good luck and finishes the call.

When he next looks up at Derek there’s a fierce scowl on his face as the older man tells him, ‘They’re not happy we’re going without them.’

‘Not happy? Understatement of the week,’ he snorts as he belatedly packs his lock-picking tools and wiring equipment with him before picking up another handgun and the magazine clip that goes with it, ‘what’s your knowledge like on firearms?’ He asks as he holds both items up.

Derek takes the gun handle first and the ammunition next, slipping the magazine in and chambering the first bullet with ease. Stiles is mildly impressed with his handling skills.

‘I’ve watched you use them enough times to get the gist of it,’ he replies as he checks for the safety before pointing the barrel down onto the ground.

‘Good, but I’m gonna give you another crash course anyway. We can’t afford to get too close for any hand-to-hand combat so we’re gonna rely on long-distance stealth,’ he tells him as he hands over a silencer next and watches as Derek twists it on without too much difficulty before taking it off again. ‘Have you ever considered joining the force?’

Derek hums as he pulls off his jacket to slip on a holster to sit snugly against his ribs. ‘I’ll think about it.’

They only leave once they’re armed to the teeth. Derek doesn’t need any knives but he’s got three guns on him; two strapped close to his body while another one is secured above his ankle under the leg of his jeans. They’re both significantly weighed down by the time they exit the bunker but it’s better to be safe than sorry.

After a quick call lasting no more than a minute they both make their way to the county line where they find Chris standing beside his car that’s just idling next to the sign farewelling them from Beacon Hills.

‘They’ve got something from each of us,’ Stiles says as he eyes both Chris and Derek. ‘Allison, Scott, and my dad – we’re not leaving San Francisco empty-handed.’ It’s time to go on the offensive.

None of them look back as they get in, and it’s not long before they’re well on their way towards San Francisco with their heads buzzing a mile a minute and an itch for a fight under their skin.

\-----

There’s no response.

No one has heard from or seen John Stilinski since he left the station for home when word got to him that his son ran away.

Concern is etched into every line of Rodgers’ and Elliot’s grim faces as they pull up beside the house thinking of the right words to ease the bad news they’re about to deliver but there’s something wrong. The sheriff’s cruiser is still parked in the driveway but the door is ajar when they step up the porch and there’s no reply when they knock. The house is empty when they enter and a better look at their immediate surroundings tells them of a struggle.

They call it in.

 


	7. Chapter 7

They’re all piled into a small private room, courtesy of Melissa McCall, and even though it’s not much it’s better than being out in the open anywhere else. Here, in the uncomfortable chairs provided by the hospital, they feel safe. The only other place safer than the hospital is with Sheriff Stilinski at the police station but he’s been taken, too, along with Scott and Allison.

Erica worries; has been in a constant state of worry ever since news of her parents’ car accident reached her ears, but she hopes they’re okay. She hopes, with everything she has, that they’ll come back alive.

For now, they take shifts keeping watch.

\-----

**Chapter 7**

\-----

It’s with little fanfare when they finally arrive in San Francisco some six hours later. The skies are tinged a dark blue, though there’s still the barest of bruised colors just where the sun has already dipped beyond the horizon. Everybody is tense as they drive over the bridge leading into the big city but Derek doesn’t let up when he tells them, ‘We’re walking into a trap.’

Stiles tries not to scoff. ‘We walked into it the second we crossed over the Golden Gate Bridge.’

It’s unsettling, but he forces down all of his doubts; he refuses to go back home to Beacon Hills without a father.

He hasn’t stepped foot in San Francisco in well over four years and not much has changed since he was last here. The layout remains exactly the same – he can probably walk the streets with a blindfold over his eyes and still reach the original destination he means to go – and it’s with certainty that he can claim he knows the place like the back of his hand. The only thing different are some shops, taken over with different businesses. The old deli is gone, replaced by a new-age trendy café, and there’s a pawn shop where he remembers an antiques shop used to be.

Eventually, they park a couple of blocks away from the underpass after having circled a few times around the streets where the apartment is located. Each time they do Derek tells them the same thing: wolfsbane, mountain ash and how the entire site reeks of it.

Stiles is assured they’ve got the right building, at the very least.

‘No heart count?’ He asks, feeling impatient and shaky from a combination of chest pains and adrenaline, as he unbuckles the seatbelt and exits the car, slamming the door shut behind him.

Derek shakes his head as he gets out, ‘Too many people around the general vicinity to give a definite number.’

Stiles shrugs but moves on with the others, on their way to execute the next part of the plan – infiltration.

There’s nobody around the immediate area that Derek can sense so it’s with less trepidation that they approach the door leading in, held shut by a simple padlock, one which Derek easily breaks with a twist of his hand. The metal snaps off after a groan and the door opens with a sharp whine. Stiles pockets the lock for later disposal as they enter, closing the door after them and holding it shut with a long iron rod so that nobody else can enter, not even the employees who might be working a shift tonight.

The way down is easy to follow, illuminated by red work lights that offer little help, and it’s even easier with Derek’s nose leading the way, scrunching up more and more the closer they get to the sewers. Stiles grimaces in sympathy because if it stinks even to his human nose then he doesn’t want to know what kind of shit-storm Derek must be smelling right now.

It’s humid and dark, takes all of them a considerable amount of time for their eyes to adjust outside of the harsh red light. They’re careful on the way in but their eyesight eventually readjusts enough that they can make out shapes to follow the contours of the walls.

But then they suddenly come across a snag roughly three blocks away from the apartment building.

Chris had walked over it without noticing and Stiles almost did, too, if not for the faint buzzing he’d felt growing under his skin the nearer he came towards the black sand scattered across the floor at their feet. There’s a line of mountain ash, going in both directions as far as he can see. He and Chris will have no problem stepping over it but it’s Derek he needs to worry about; it’s Derek he needs to think for.

‘Hold on a sec,’ Stiles says as he crouches low over the line, hand digging into the satchel of mountain ash he’s got stuffed in one of his pockets. He rubs the ash between his fingers, coats his entire hand with it before laying it over the boundary keeping Derek from coming any closer. The line crackles with energy, sparking blue as it fights against him. He feels sick to his stomach and he has to take big, gulping breaths of stale air so he doesn’t end up throwing up. He doesn’t know why he feels this way but he chalks it up to the fact that he hasn’t done this for too long. The smell of the sewage isn’t helping either.

Finally, with one last crack of energy, the line disperses and Stiles can’t hold his nausea in for much longer, taking two stumbling steps away before heaving what little he has in his stomach against the wall.

There’s an aching throb in his chest and an echoing one in his head. He feels dizzy and too warm under his clothes, burning in his skin, but he spits the horrible taste from his mouth and leads the way again, red with shame and unable to meet the eyes of either Derek or Chris as they move along.

‘Take a breather, Stiles,’ Chris says as he grabs hold of his arm and stops him from taking another step. ‘I don’t know what that was but you look like a ghost.’

‘I just hate this place,’ he replies as honestly as he can as he shakes out the last of the mountain ash from his fingers, although he can’t get rid of the smudges between the creases of his palm.

‘Mint?’ Derek actually offers.

Stiles almost laughs but accepts the small canister and pops two of them into his mouth, relishes the sweet taste of it on his tongue before handing it back. ‘I knew I brought you for something other than your supernatural disposition.’

Derek and Chris both roll their eyes in response to that but they patiently wait for Stiles to settle back into his skin before moving on.

It’s a small trek, occasionally going in a direction that almost seems to round back to the very beginning again, but they press on until Stiles finds the right door leading into the right building. It’s got another padlock holding it shut which Derek breaks again, with slightly more difficulty, before pocketing the pieces.

With the door shut behind him closing off more than just the stench of waste water, they find the room they’ve entered is warm for a different reason. It’s drier, just slightly, and smells faintly more of metallic than sewage. Stiles doesn’t know why places like these always operate using red bulbs but he feels they should consider a different kind of lighting – he won’t be surprised if he comes out of this with bloodshot eyes in the end.

Derek makes an aborted inhale before further scrunching up his nose before pinching it shut. One look at him is all Stiles needs to know the air here is probably saturated with wolfsbane.

‘Is it going to be a problem?’ He asks, concern coloring his tone as he considers how badly Derek’s senses will be dulled from overexposure in a hunter’s environment. Derek shakes his head, though, and gamely takes a few stilted breaths before lowering his hand and trying again. ‘How are you feeling?’

‘Like there’s an uncomfortable rash inside my lungs,’ he rasps out and instead takes a deep breath of his jacket instead of the stale air around them.

Stiles winces in sympathy but he can’t afford to be kind as he asks again, ‘How’s your tracking going to be like?’

Derek takes one more deep breath before straightening up and rolling his shoulder to ease his tension. ‘Not optimal but I can do it.’

‘Then take point,’ he lets Derek ahead of him, sticking to the middle to guide them while Chris stays close behind. They pass the maintenance hatch and it’s not much further away when they see another door and a glimmer of white fluorescent light shining from the gap beneath it. Thankfully, there are no shadows but he asks anyway as he pops open the hub and tries to figure out which line leads to the security cameras, ‘Heart count?’

‘At least two nearby,’ Derek answers with a small shake of his head, as if he’s trying to clear the fumes wafting around him.

‘Just two?’

‘I expected at least double that,’ Chris mutters, although he doesn’t lower his guard as he readies a gun with a silencer.

Stiles can’t help but agree. ‘Keep a lookout; we can’t afford to get surprised by anyone,’ he says, trying to keep the tension out of his voice as he pulls out the wiring equipment and starts stripping the plastic coating off two cables. He tacks on an extension and connects it to a handheld device that begins recording a ten-second grainy black and white loop of a blissfully empty hallway before setting it to play. He repeats this for the entire building and syncs one device for another before testing it to make sure everything words accordingly. He shuts the door after tucking the gadget out of sight and gives the all-clear signal to the others.

Derek takes out a gun from his holster, mimicking the same movements as Chris before gripping the door handle tightly in one hand and gently easing it open just a crack. He’s just about to open it further when he suddenly stops short and seems to meet resistance. A quick look down is all Stiles needs to realize they’ve come across a second line of mountain ash just outside the boiler room.

He swears under his breath as he dips a hand into the small bag of mountain ash again before changing places with Derek. He takes one more quick look on the security cameras to make sure nobody’s coming their way and trusts Derek to tell him if that changes before lowering a hand over the black ash. There’s no finesse this time, he shoves as much energy he can spare to break the connection, winces at the jolt of electricity thrumming through his fingers and up his arm. It’s over within seconds but he comes out of it shaky, exhausted and nauseous but not enough that he can’t control it.

‘We have to move; whoever made this will have noticed it’s broken – we’ve lost the element of surprise,’ Stiles says as he pushes the door open and gestures for Derek to take point again. He checks the handheld once every few seconds whenever they near another hall only to find that it’s empty. It bothers him, the lack of hunters on this floor, although he can see at least four on the next level down.

‘I can smell blood, a lot of it,’ Derek stops to take a few deep breaths, both to clear his sinuses and to give him a clearer direction before walking again but he stops abruptly just before a junction, face growing pale to match with Stiles’ complexion as he turns to say, ‘I smell Allison’s perfume, too.’

‘Where,’ Chris demands, breaking their small formation to crowd against Derek, hope and fear in his voice and face as he begs, ‘where is she?’

Stiles takes a look at the real feed from the security cameras he guesses are ahead of them but the pictures are smudged with large trails of black that he can’t make heads or tails of. He ignores it, deeming it unimportant so long as the way to Allison is clear. He pushes for Derek to continue, who seems to accept Chris acting as his shadow as they draw nearer to where she might be held.

They round the corner and simultaneously stop at the sight of blood trailing all over the floor leading into an ajar door. It’s now that Stiles realizes this is what the black smudges on the security cameras were.

Chris rushes forward, almost slipping once but manages to right himself as he pushes the door open with his gun pointed ahead only to hesitate just at the threshold. He and Derek join him only to find a dead body shoved to the side and a chair with an abandoned pair of black boots and cut pieces of rope around the bolted-down legs. The older man picks up with rope and visibly sags with relief after he’s examined the ends of it with a wry smirk on his face, obviously proud at the skills his daughter displayed to make her escape.

Stiles quickly scans the images again, going through each security footage until he catches a black blur disappearing around a corner and reappearing as a bruised version of Allison Argent.

By the time they get to the right hallway, Allison has already moved on but not before leaving another dead body behind like a horrible rendition of breadcrumbs to guide them forward. Derek is no longer leading the way; Chris is following the barefooted blood prints on the floor, gaining speed when they begin to hear signs of a struggle just up ahead. Stiles foregoes the handheld, no longer finding any use for it as they round the corner to find Allison standing over a dead man with a blood-soaked knife in her hand.

Stiles can still remember the hesitance she displayed when he offered her the handle of a knife four years ago. Obviously, that’s gone now.

‘Dad?’ Her expression crumples to one of mixed fear and relief as she drops the knife and shakily gets up to her feet to stagger her way towards him.

Her exposed arms and legs are covered in blood and Stiles can’t even begin to guess the original color of her clothes, dark as they’ve become from rivulets and splatters of blood. She’s got a shiner, a split lip, a bruised cheek and a gash on her side through her ripped top. One of her ankles is swollen now that he’s taken a good look at her but, apart from that, she seems mostly alright.

‘You remembered my first lesson,’ Chris says with pride in his voice as he tries to support her weight.

‘Yeah,’ she smiles as she holds out a sharp arrowhead trinket, ‘always be prepared.’

‘The both of you should go,’ Derek tells them, offering his jacket for Allison who readily accepts it, pulling it closer over the shaking body. ‘Do you know your way back?’

Chris nods his head but Stiles gives him the handheld anyway; anything to give them the best advantage of getting out alive with the least amount of resistance on their way. He trusts they can handle any bad situation they come across, though.

‘Wait,’ Allison panics as her dad takes the device, ‘what about Scott? I heard him earlier; they were torturing him.’

‘We’ll find him,’ Derek promises as he exchanges a quick nod of encouragement with Stiles.

It takes some convincing but Chris is the one to pull Allison with him when she begins to protest that four people are better than two. He can see the regret in the older man’s eyes but none of them can afford to give Allison even the smallest shred of attention that can be better spent elsewhere if they’re to find both Scott and his dad from within these basement levels.

With one-third of the rescue completed they quickly round the halls until they find the elevator. They opt for the stairs instead, taking two at a time going down until they reach the second basement level. Stiles expects to find a third barrier mountain ash barring their entrance but what he ends up with is Derek telling him that he can smell a burst of chemicals beneath the stench of blood and wolfsbane.

‘Like alcohol, but sweeter,’ Derek tries to explain as they make their way into the quiet corridor until they’re stepping in through a wide room.

The level is different to what he remembers; it’s gone through some modifications but the general layout is still the same, except the door they came in from led them straight into what is often deemed as “the coliseum”.

‘We need to back up,’ Stiles says as he pulls on Derek’s arm none-too-gently, trying to get back out because every single part of him is suddenly on high alert. His senses prove him right when the door they’d just stepped in through automatically slides shut and locks itself with a rusty snap of metal, plunging them into a world of darkness.

There’s a crackle of static overhead and Stiles whips his head in the direction of where the walkway is located. He can’t see what’s ahead of him, not even half a foot, but he knows Derek’s nearby, straining all of his senses to make up for his loss of sight.

‘My daughter-in-law died because of him,’ Gerard’s sneering voice echoes around the empty room.

Stiles can feel more than he can see when Derek flinches, but he ignores it as he shouts in return, ‘She killed herself.’

The old man snorts derisively. ‘She died honorably,’ he tells them, as though death is a better option than turning into the monsters they hunt, ‘which is something you’ll go to your graves without.’

A door on the far side of the room slides open, letting in a column of bright light that’s more than enough to illuminate a good half of their surroundings. Stiles quickly pulls out his gun, foregoing the silencer, as he takes aim at the shadow taking one staggering step after another into the room. Before he can make a shot, though, Derek is forcing the barrel downwards.

‘What are you--’

‘It’s Scott.’

No sooner had he said those two words did Scott stumble in on all fours, looking wild and delirious on pain and bleeding sluggishly from multiple open wounds. Stiles barely has any time to think of a better solution when a deafening roar shocks into his body and Scott is running towards them, claws out and hungry for blood.

Derek hands him his gun, safety on, features shifted and ready to defend. Scott barrels into him with a large enough impact to make bones break but they easily roll off the other’s body to get back up. Stiles can see how much Derek is relying purely on defensive moves, more to disarm than to hurt, but Scott is throwing one wild attack after another, landing one hit in every four or five slashes.

As Stiles watches them clash against one another he knows without a doubt that this is what Gerard wanted: a fight to the death.

They don’t call this place “the coliseum” for nothing.

\-----

They’re barely a block away from the car before he realizes he can’t leave thing as they are; he can’t just _leave_.

Allison is throwing one argument after another, not loud enough to draw attention to the fact that she’s covered in blood with bruises all over her face, but enough to make a point: they can’t just leave the others behind to clean up their family messes.

She’s right, but they’re sorely outnumbered and, not only that, sorely lacking in information.

But they end up finding a nice surprise waiting by the car, a man who is more than capable of turning the odds in their favor, although he was a vet the last time he’d heard of him.

 


	8. Chapter 8

Secrets are the currency in the world of which they currently live in. They are priceless and can be bartered for a great many things, more than even money can purchase. He has used secrets to his advantage many times before, not only to get himself out of situations best avoided but also the ability to buy himself and his sister out of a place, if given a choice, he’d rather they never have stepped foot in.

It’s been over half a decade since then and despite everything in him telling him to get away from that hellish world, his judgment tells him this is the right thing to do. After all, he owes Stiles this much: the boy with a spark.

He’ll trade in all of his secrets if it means the chance of giving Stiles back the freedom that was taken from him.

\-----

**Chapter 8**

\-----

Derek is losing spectacularly, staggering under each and every strike from Scott who isn’t even registering his own wounds and pains as he attacks relentlessly, growing more and more delirious as the seconds tick onwards.Stiles can’t get a clear shot, not without seriously putting Derek at a large disadvantage, but he can see that Derek can’t keep up for much longer, either.

‘Hold him!’ He shouts as he tries to aim a shot at one of Scott’s legs that are throwing kicks and making jumps like a wild animal, anything to give Derek the leverage he needs to disable the other.

The overhead speaker crackles back on, Gerard’s voice echoing around the room as he asks, ‘Let’s test your memory: what’s the best situation a hunter can hope for?’

‘A win-win situation,’ he replies unthinkingly, breathlessly, as he eyes the growing number of wounds on Derek’s body and the increased splatters of blood across the floor. He slips on a puddle of it, almost pulling the trigger and shooting with less-than-stellar aim.

‘That’s right,’ he sounds pleased, ‘why dirty your hands when you can get the wolves to kill each other?’

He can’t breathe suddenly; he can’t think beyond the buzz in his head or hear anything that’s not an echoed roar or a cry of pain. His hands are shaking and he has to point the gun downwards before he ends up killing either of the two werewolves. Derek is losing, Scott is already lost and Stiles wants to scream over the unfairness that this is what his life has always been about: loss. But he refuses to give Gerard that satisfaction.

Stiles crouches low and aims high, because he knows that if he doesn’t do anything, if all he can do is stand there uselessly, then they’re both going to die all because he can’t decide on the right thing to do.

He made a promise to Melissa to find Scott; he never promised more than that.

The shot rings out loudly and the silence that follows it is deafening.

His chest aches as Derek, face open with raw emotion, kneels over Scott’s body, finally still and peaceful. His hands continue to shake but he doesn’t lower the gun, choosing to aim higher and higher until he can see the walkway in his sights even as his vision blurs and stings. Someone is screaming as he empties the magazine into the bulletproof glass, sending cracks in all directions before a repeated shot in the same location finally makes it through the wire mesh. Stiles doesn’t realize the scream is coming from his own mouth until he’s breathless from it and choking under the weight of his actions, fingers clicking uselessly at the trigger.

He runs, ignoring Derek’s shout, throwing down the now-useless gun and pulling out another as he sprints towards the only option available to him. There’s a panel box that controls the cell bars at the end of the corridor and he shoots blindly through the bars, practically emptying another magazine trying to short-circuit it until one of the bullets hit home and all the doors are swinging open with loud clangs.

Stiles replaces the empty clip with a new one, unloading and reloading as he races up the stairs until he reaches the walkway. It’s with satisfaction that he takes in the broken glass, deformed metal and the random spots of blood on the dust-covered walls. There’s not a lot of it, Gerard’s blood, but at least now he knows he managed to get a chip in the old man’s armor.

Derek is still shouting for him from where he’s crouched by Scott’s body but Stiles can’t bear to look; can’t bear to see what he did to his best friend. He’s so sorry, but he won’t be as sorry if he let Gerard get away with everything he’s done to them.

He finds himself back on the first basement level, led on by the tiny spots of blood that occasionally dot the floor. The doors to every room are swung open and he steps carefully, arms straight and grip tight as he keeps his entire surroundings in check. The rooms are empty as far as he can see; no hidden surprises, but it doesn’t stop the flood of memories from coming back to him as he continues his way down the corridor.

Stiles never told anyone, not even his dad, but he remembers being locked in these rooms for training purposes. He remembers it being cold and dank, with two other people for company and where the only light available to them was the single bulb hanging from the middle of the ceiling, swaying to a nonexistent breeze.

The first person he ever killed was a girl, barely older than him in her pre-teens, gagged and tied to the rusty metal chair bolted to the floor. The beginning of the lesson went like this: he’s shown once, and only once, how to dismantle and reassemble a gun. After that, it’s all up to him. If he’s wrong and pulling the trigger does absolutely nothing then Gerard would take out his own gun with feigned disappointment and shoot the girl himself. It’s not a killing blow, but her muffled screams of terror and pain became Stiles’ motivation to work harder, be better. The lesson eventually ends like this: she dies from excessive blood-loss; thirteen bullets scattered across her body, none of them from the magazine of his own gun missing its’ firing pin.

Eventually, he got the hang of it, going through maybe two families worth of human and werewolf children before perfecting the art of putting together a standard handgun without fail, killing a boy that’s much too young to rend or tear anybody to pieces with a bullet between his eyes.He learned his lesson, but the other lesson he learned with it was mercy; that, sometimes, death is the only way to help.

He remembers Gerard praising him, full of pride and wonder as he clapped him on the back while Stiles hid his shaking hands beneath the desk, his eyes focused on the limp body no more than a couple dozen yards in front of him. There had been nothing good about it but as long as it mean he didn’t have to hear another wolf-child cry out in pain then it would have to be worth it. He couldn’t afford to keep paying their price of failure with the lives of people who were unfortunate enough to be caught by them.

If he’d known Gerard was going to teach him how to perform corpectomy next he would’ve reconsidered his newfound abilities on wielding a gun. It’s a lesson that took him significantly more time to achieve, and it’s a lesson that leaves him more mentally scarred than putting a bullet between a kid’s eyes.

Stiles breathes deep at the thought of his past, tries to shake himself out of it as he tightens his grip over the handle of the gun and rounds another corner, keeping mindful of where the blood is leading him, though the distance between each splatter is growing increasingly larger and larger the further he goes. He checks another room, finds it empty except for a lone desk and accompanying chair, but it’s what’s behind them that makes Stiles stagger forward, breathless at the sight of his dad sitting in a chair surrounded by a pool of his own blood.

All thoughts of Gerard flee from his mind as he drops the gun, fingers restless as they check for his pulse but his hands are shaking so badly that he can hardly feel anything. Stiles calls out to him, pats him on his cheek to wake him up, over and over again even through the crack and the choke in his voice as his heart races. His dad doesn’t wake, not even after he struggles with a knife’s edge on the ropes tying him to the chair and it’s then Stiles fears the worst when he can’t even tell if his dad is still alive or not.

There are several claw marks along his body – on his neck and shoulders, on his forearms and along his chest – but there’s no discernible pattern that he can see except for blind rage, and he chokes again at the thought that maybe Scott did this to him.

He lies him down carefully, tries again to feel a pulse, holds a breath in as he presses on that spot at the line of his jaw and doesn’t let it out until he feels the barest of flutters beneath his fingertips.

‘I’m surprised by how much your father knows,’ Gerard tells him casually and Stiles suddenly feels consumed with hate and anger so raw he can’t stop his body from shaking violently with the urge to attack with everything he’s got, but Gerard’s holding a gun and his fear for his dad’s life trumps his rage so he stays kneeled with his trousers soaking up the spilled blood.

Stiles is reminded intimately of a similar position with Boyd but this time he doesn’t have a single clue how to stop his dad from dying of blood loss.

‘We practiced secrecy for a reason,’ the old man continues, his gun idly aimed downwards and shaking slightly.

He snorts but relishes at the blood he can see dripping off the barrel of the gun from the small gash on the old man’s torn jacket, ‘Of course; we both know how much you like your _secrets_.’ Gerard looks older under the harsh fluorescent light, more frail as if he’d aged more than just four more years, but it doesn’t change the fact that Stiles wants to punch him in the face repeatedly.

Gerard’s face hardens as he addresses the dying man in Stiles’ arms, ‘If I’d known this was going to happen I would’ve killed your mother and your father the first moment I took you,’ he says, voice hard and unflinching.

‘I would’ve killed you the second I found out,’ he promises through gritted teeth, wishes he hadn’t let go of his gun as he kneels protectively over his dad’s body. For all the few inches that separate them, it feels more like a mile stands between them. He can’t risk trying to reach for it, not with Gerard having the upper hand and his dad dying from wounds too big to measure and too much for a human body to handle.

‘I doubt it,’ he scoffs, looking comfortable at the knowledge that Stiles would do no such thing.

He wants to cry, he wants to scream and shout, because as much as he hates the man who stole more than just his life, the bottom line is that he still spent well over half of his life growing in his shadow.

A roar breaks him out of his melancholy, the sound of it loud and reverberating, drawing Gerard’s attention away long enough for Stiles to close that distance between his fingers and the gun to take aim and shoot. He goes for a crippling shot: the shoulder and the leg, and the old man crumples without resistance, a strangled yell on his lips.

Stiles lowers his dad carefully, quickly, before hurrying over towards Gerard who’s struggling to sit up, whole body shivering from the shock of receiving two bullet wounds in his body. He kicks the gun away from the old man’s limp grip and aims his gun at Gerard’s head with shaky hands. ‘Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t empty the entire clip into your skull,’ he threatens, although he doesn’t intend to follow through.

Gerard has the audacity to laugh in his face even with blood-soaked lips and stained teeth, even as he tells him, ‘You were a good son to me – the only thing my own son ever did right was marrying Victoria.’

‘Don’t give me your goddamn life’s story.’ He’s already heard most of it, if not all. But worst of all, he hates himself for feeling sympathetic for a man who is sick not only in body but also in mind.

He notices it then, the puddle of blood growing wider and wider in diameter even though he knows he didn’t hit any major arteries with the two bullets he shot off. He’s confused at first, having to double-check to make sure he hadn’t somehow aimed wrongly, but then he remembers that Gerard has been going to the hospital regularly for his cancer treatment and it’s obvious from the full-bodied shake and the sickly pale complexion on the older man’s face that he overestimated Gerard’s ability to survive the bullet wounds.

Stiles swears as he takes off his jacket, leaving his guns and knives out of reach as he kneels over Gerard’s dying body to staunch the bleeding. He swears at him, pushing harder than necessary as if it might stop the blood from soaking into his clothes and painting his fingers red.

‘I hate you,’ he says without meaning to, ‘I hate you for taking my life, I hate you for almost killing my dad, I hate you for dying because you don’t fucking deserve to die; you deserve to rot. I hate you for trying to turn me into you and I hate that you mostly succeeded. I hate--’ he chokes and tries to blink back the tears but he can’t, because Gerard is dead, no longer breathing under the force of his upper body weight, stupid bloody smile on his lips.

His chest aches, like a punch, and he can’t find it within himself to get up and leave the old man alone. It’s stupid; idiotic, to feel sorrow for a man who caused him so much grief, who gave him so much to fear for, who gifted him all the wrong things and stole away all his best memories, but here he is: mourning.

There are running footsteps coming towards him but he feels so tired, so light-headed, so done with everything and it’s not long before he catches sight of Derek’s shoes from the corner of his eyes.

‘Stiles.’

He shakes his head, finally drawing his hands away from the blood-soaked jacket to stare at his shaking and blood-stained fingers. ‘I hate him. I do. But the f-fact is—’ he chokes again, trying to breathe around the lump in his throat, ‘—the fact is that he raised me for 12 years. I-I can’t get them back.’

Derek doesn’t say anything else, not as he lays a hand over Stiles’ shoulder and carefully maneuvers it to his bicep, gently pulling him up and away from where Gerard lies dead. He staggers on his feet unsteadily, feeling dizzy and nauseous all over again even though this isn’t new: killing someone isn’t something new to him anymore, but it never gets any easier.

He’s thankful for that, at least.

‘There’s someone who needs you,’ Derek reminds him as he leads him back to his dad, whose breathing is becoming increasingly shallow, though he’s relieved to see that the bleeding has slowed almost to a complete stop. ‘You have to make a choice, Stiles; do you want me to give him the bite?’

He inhales sharply as he turns his eyes on Derek, can’t help the stilted, ‘What?’ from escaping his lips as he looks back at the wounds and realizes there’s no way his dad is coming out of this as a human.

‘He smells like infection, but if I give him the bite it’ll fast-track the change; he’ll get out of this alive.’

‘There are other options,’ a new voice tells them and they both turn back towards the door where a dark-skinned man is standing just beyond the threshold, posture straight and eyes forward.

Stiles grabs the gun still strapped to Derek’s holster and aims before he can take in the familiarity the other man is exhibiting. Even after the familiarity clicks in he doesn’t lower the gun and Derek follows his lead, not retracting his claws.

‘Dylan,’ the man greets with a quiet smile.

‘Stiles,’ he corrects as he tightens his grip, feeling more on edge now that he can feel a heavy energy in the air reacting to his own spark, depleted of energy as it is.

His smile widens, ‘It’s good to see you again.’

‘Leave before I seriously consider shooting you in the face, Alan,’ he threatens, belatedly clicking off the safety to make his point.

‘There are other options,’ he continues as though receiving death threats is part of the norm; no longer something to blink at. ‘You can help him _without_ forcing the change that only has, at best, a 50% chance of working.’

Derek growls at this, a low rumble deep in his chest, but Stiles finds his heart lurching uncomfortably at the thought that, even with the bite, his dad could still end up dying.

‘I can significantly improve your odds,’ Alan promises, ‘but with your help we can be certain of it.’

It feels like he’s making a deal with another devil but he desperately wants his dad to survive and he desperately wants his dad to come out of this without any further complications in their already complicated lives. He finds himself lowering the gun, albeit shakily, but he’s enticed.

‘What do you want me to do?’ He asks, all the while ignoring the sharp look Derek is directing at him.

‘To have faith,’ he answers simply as he holds up a satchel of mountain ash that Stiles hadn’t even realized he’d dropped on his way to get here. ‘Mountain ash has multiple uses; this is one of them.’

Stiles hands the gun over to Derek as he takes the bag, opens it up and takes a fistful of the black sand before waiting for the rest of the instructions.

He starts by walking a loose circle around his dad’s body, the mountain ash trailing out of his fingers as Alan explains to him, all the while remaining the observer, the act of containing the infection and containing the change that’s occurring from within the multiple claw wounds inflicted.

‘You are creating a barrier; the first line of defense to counteract the shift,’ Alan tells him as Stiles closes the line with the last of the ash in his hand before reaching into the satchel for another handful, ‘this next part is going to hurt.’

Stiles frowns as he tells him with as much vehemence as he can muster, ‘I. Don’t. Care.’

Alan nods, as if he suspected as much, before continuing in giving his instructions, ‘You need to give a little bit of your spark away, just temporarily and only just enough to help activate the spark your father has in his own body.’

He gasps, his hand tightening perceptively over the mountain ash he has in his grips as he gives a wide-eyed stare to his dad, still unconscious on the floor between them.

Alan looks at him, understanding alight in his features as he tells him, ‘A spark doesn’t appear from nowhere; there needs to be a source.’

Stiles suddenly has a hundred questions he wants to ask but it isn’t the time or place to go about this new bit of information. Instead, he stores it in the back of his mind to mule over for later. Now, he has to do whatever it takes to keep his dad alive.

‘How do I do this?’ He asks eventually.

‘You just have to believe,’ Alan tells him as he places Stiles’ closed fist over his dad’s heart, gently opens it until the ash is spread under his hand and he can feel the energy that had been buzzing in the air settle beneath his fingers.

He believes. He believes with everything he’s got, he believes with all of his might and all of his heart that his dad will recover from this, that he will survive and more than just that; _live_.

Derek, who’d been standing off to the side to give them the space to work, is suddenly tripping over his feet trying to get closer, eyes wide with surprise as he lets out a breathless sound of awe. ‘It’s working,’ he says with barely concealed astonishment on his face.

Stiles can’t help a smile of his own as a familiar zing of energy crackles through the air before settling in a warm haze around them. He laughs, feeling giddy and high that he did it; that he helped his dad from what would’ve either been a bad case of septicemia or a full-body shift from human to werewolf. He has nothing against the bite, but he feels his dad deserves some amount of normalcy after the things they’ve been through.

‘Congratulations,’ Alan smiles as he says this, ‘you did it.’

He laughs again, because he can’t remember the last time he laughed like this, so full of joy over life, but he can’t hold the feeling forever and he quickly sobers as he turns his eyes on Derek and asks him, ‘Where’s Scott?’

The smile quickly slips off Derek’s face as he tells him, ‘Allison and Chris are with him, keeping him company while he heals from the wolfsbane poisoning.’

‘Thank God,’ he breathes as he gets up to his feet only to immediately fall back down onto his knees at the sudden bout of dizziness he feels not only in his head but from his stomach as well. Derek is speaking to him, asking him if he’s alright but his chest aches with an unexpected ferocity and he doesn’t think he imagined the wet slickness as he pulls the Kevlar away from his body. He anticipates a bloody shirt from the ripped stitches he obviously pulled from too much cardio but he ends up seeing nothing but rivers of black blood, trailing down from the tip of his sternum and soaking through to the bottom hem of his shirt.

A wave of nausea hits him at the sight and he can’t fight down the urge to expel whatever he feels growing in his gut. The vomit comes out black and that’s when fingers settle beneath his chin, pulling his head up until he’s looking at Alan dead in the eye, but he can’t register a single word the man is saying. He feels heavy, and he doesn’t fight it when he falls again.

\-----

He wakes up crying and screaming, even though he’s relieved to see Allison above him and Chris watching guard over them. He doesn’t remember a whole lot except for fear and anger and so much confusion. But no, that’s a lie: he remembers John, and he remembers killing the man with his own two hands.

Scott cries and feels as though he deserves more than every hurt currently in his body. He wishes Stiles had aimed for someplace other than his ribs.

 


	9. Chapter 9

Every minute that passes feels like another hour gone but then he takes another look at the analog clock displayed on the wall next to the TV that only plays infomercials and old sitcoms that he realizes it’s been barely a day since Derek and the others left Beacon Hills to settle a score in God knows where.

Isaac continues to fidget in his seat, eyes drifting back and forth watching the world outside the window and the four other occupants in the room. Boyd is still sleeping off the ordeal he suffered through in the early morning and Erica is keeping him company, providing him warmth and a touch that while physically does nothing, mentally stimulates ease and contentment.

Melissa is holding herself stiff with her arms crossed over her chest, eyes shadowed from too much stress but still hyperaware of her surroundings. Her shift ended well over four hours ago but she hasn’t left to change out of her scrubs and return for home, no doubt under orders to keep close to the others. There is safety in numbers, after all.

Erica’s dad is sound asleep, though he hadn’t seemed too put-off when he’d woken up some hours prior and found his room commandeered by a group of young adults plus one nurse. If anything, he seemed glad for the company, because any distraction from his late wife is better than to be left alone dwelling in the thoughts of her.

It’s been a long day and Isaac has a feeling it’s going to be an even longer night.

\-----

**Chapter 9**

\-----

He knows what wolfsbane poisoning looks like, having experienced it well over a dozen times in just the last half decade alone, and it’s never an easy thing to go through. He knows all the signs exhibiting it, the pain that comes with it, and he knows how to tell when they can still help or when they’ve reached the point of no return, except that…except that Stiles is _human_ and it doesn’t explain why he’s looking as if he’s going through all the symptoms of wolfsbane poisoning and just one breath away from death.

Stiles isn’t waking up.

‘I don’t understand,’ Derek starts, feeling breathless as he tries to make sense of what he’s seeing. ‘Stiles is human; he hasn’t been bitten, and prolonged exposure from a pack of werewolves doesn’t actually encourage the change.’ There have been speculations but that’s all they ever amounted to; there are no real recordings of a case even remotely similar to what Stiles is currently going through.

‘It originates from here, definitely,’ Alan tells him as he trails his fingers along the blackened veins until he reaches the point of the open wound on Stiles’ chest still slowly oozing black blood. ‘How did you not smell this?’ He asks, tone free of accusation, although Derek can’t help but bristle and feel chastised for not having noticed it sooner.

‘There’s too much wolfsbane in the air for me to realize it’s actually coming from him,’ Derek tries to explain, ‘he started smelling more distinctly of it the second we arrived but I didn’t--I didn’t…’ he stops, feels his excuses dissolve on his tongue before they can form.

‘It’s alright,’ the other man placates as he gently wipes what he can of the sludge away from Stiles’ chest before cutting the threads holding the rupture close with a borrowed knife. They both watch as new blood rushes out, painting the pale expanse of Stiles’ body with red before slowly, slowly turning thick and dark until it’s nothing but a long line of black.

Alan quietly murmurs to himself under his breath, words clipped and clinical as if he’s speaking to a recorder before picking up Stiles’ hand and cutting into the palm of it. ‘What are you doing?’ Derek hisses, feeling his hackles rise at the way the man is so casually inflicting one wound after another on Stiles’ already injured body, but he watches as the blood welling in the creases of Stiles’ limp hand continues to stay red and he can’t help his small sigh of relief that, at least, not all hope is lost. Derek wants to question but even though Stiles had a rocky reintroduction with the other man he still trusted Alan enough to help him save his father.

‘Stiles was shot, wasn’t he? By Kate Argent,’ Alan asks as he eyes Derek with a considering gaze. ‘The wolfsbane from the bullet she used would’ve eventually been flushed out of his body in its own time but there’s something else in him making it worse.’

‘His spark?’ He guesses and finally makes sense of the other times Stiles used his abilities to break the mountain ash barrier, suddenly looking much too pale and sickly after having completed the task. ‘I’ve seen him disperse the energy that keeps mountain ash up and running before but it’s never affected him this badly.’ He usually looks fatigued but never to the point of collapsing.

‘The excessive use of mountain ash coupled with the transferral of his spark accelerated the effects of wolfsbane poisoning much too quickly for his body to counteract the damage he’s trying to heal from. But that’s not the only issue we have to deal with.’

‘What? What else is there?’

‘Oh, my God, Stiles!’ Allison shouts as she enters the room, almost letting Chris pick up Scott’s weight between them and tripping over her grandfather’s dead body in her haste to get closer. ‘What happened? Why is he--what’s wrong with him?’ She asks as they help settle a bleary-eyed Scott, who flinches at the sight of the unconscious sheriff, gently down onto the floor.

Chris looks crushed as he stares down at the still body of his father, his expression full of sorrow and pain mixed in with hints of relief. He closes his old man’s dead eyes with a shaky hand and remains kneeled, almost in prayer, over him.

‘In a manner of speaking,’ Alan tells her before turning his attention to Derek who snaps his eyes away from Chris back to the other. ‘It’s in his blood.’

He flashes back to the moment Stiles was shot, colliding painfully against his blood-smeared chest before collapsing onto the floor gasping for air and fighting for breath. It had barely been more than a couple of seconds of contact but it was apparently more than enough time for it to settle into Stiles’ bloodstream.

‘It’s mine; my blood,’ Derek says haltingly, and it’s only after he thinks through it for a second and third time that he’s convinced of what he’s saying. ‘Stiles has some of my blood in him, from when he was shot.’

Allison looks at him in wide eyes, mouth open in shock as she hovers her hands over Stiles’ body, her fingers trembling above his too still and too pale skin under the horrible lighting of the single bulb above them.

Alan’s expression crumples in a myriad of emotions, passing too quickly in succession as the information sinks in, though he doesn’t ask for what other possibilities there might be as if he already knows it’s the right one. ‘This isn’t good. The wolfsbane, your blood, his spark; on its own any one of those things would’ve been fine; he can recover from those, but all of it together equals to a horrible cocktail creating a domino effect of negative consequences on his body. He won’t last for much longer.’

At this Allison gasps, still wordless from the new knowledge while a small pained noise escapes Scott, eyes squeezed shut and slowly rocking back and forth as he settles a blood-soaked hand on the leg of Stiles’ pants, as though to ground him and convince his mind that his friend isn’t dying; that he’ll live through this.

‘How do we stop it? How can we help?’ Derek asks, feeling desperate for a solution and strapped for time.

‘The only thing I can think of at the moment is to counteract the wolfsbane: burn it and do as you would your own wounds.’

‘So we just find the right strain,’ Allison says as she looks at her father who’s already standing up and taking out a small kit of powdered ashes ready for use.

‘No!’ Alan shouts urgently before they can open the case, hand held out imploringly, ‘No, his body won’t be able to cope; it’ll overload the system and he’ll die sooner rather than later. You need the original bullets.’

‘It’s back at the station,’ a guttural voice tells them followed by a quiet groan. Everybody turns their head with mixed emotions of shock and panic as John slowly tries to make himself sit up, already sweating and panting from over-exertion. He gladly accepts the hand Chris offers him while Allison drags over the wooden chair for him to rest on, tactfully positioned away from the metal one he’d been tied to. Scott doesn’t move and neither of them passes a glance on one another. ‘We stored Kate’s gun in the evidence room, if that’s what you’re after.’

John looks old suddenly, face tight as he takes in the sight of his unconscious son. Derek hates that this is the second time in less than a month John’s had to see Stiles fighting for his life again. What he hates most of all is the lack of judgment on his face for the people who led him to this point.

‘We need to go; Beacon Hills is a long drive away,’ Chris tells them while Allison helps Scott up, though he seems reluctant to let go of Stiles.

‘Long drive?’ John repeats, his eyes wide in panic as he sits straighter, wincing slightly from the pain littered across his body. ‘Where the hell are we?’

‘San Francisco,’ Derek answers him as he gently maneuvers Stiles to lift him in his arms, careful not to jostle the wound and send his body into a different kind of shock. He doesn’t make a single sound.

‘Please tell me you’ve got your own car,’ Allison addresses this to Alan, almost begging as she struggles a little bit under Scott’s weight as Chris helps John to his feet.

Alan smiles reassuringly as he offers her a hand to help balance Scott between them before leading the way out, ‘Of course, you two will have to come with me; Sheriff Stilinski needs to keep as close to Stiles as possible. The proximity of their shared spark might be just enough to give him the extra edge he needs to survive this.’

‘What the hell is he talking about?’ John asks Chris, staggering behind the others while Derek takes up the rear, holding Stiles with care as they leave.

They’re all cautious as they step over Gerard’s body, barely giving him a sideways glance as they exit the room, this time opting for the side entrances of the apartment building instead of doubling back through the sewers.

He thinks they can make the drive back in a little under a couple of hours, but it wouldn’t matter if all Stiles has left is till the end of the hour. He hopes; hopes that Stiles’ heart, though weak, continues to beat and buy them more time.

\--

Chris is breaking almost all kinds of speeding laws while traveling across the freeway but John doesn’t seem to mind or care, not with his entire attention focused on his son lying in his lap. Derek can’t help the occasional glance over his shoulder whenever they make a particularly hard turn around a tight curve – they need to get back to Beacon Hills as soon as possible and they’re only just slightly over halfway there.

‘I told you not to go after him,’ John murmurs under his breath as he holds a shaky hand over Stiles’ torso, keeping him close as they race their way through California to get back home. ‘You never listen to me, just like you didn’t listen to me when I told you to stay with your mother at the playground.’

Derek stops listening, or tries to, but the radio is off and there’s nothing else for miles around that his ears can focus on. He starts listening to the shift in gears as Chris drives instead, finding it better than the broken voice the sheriff is using as he speaks to an unconscious Stiles.

It’s hours after midnight and just a couple more before sunrise. Even though it’s only been a couple of days since they found out Gerard had escape from his prison transport vehicle along with the startling realization that Allison and Scott have been taken, it feels as though it’s been the better part of a month.

He feels wrung out and on edge, unable to sit still even though it’s all they can currently do. Alan is behind them, keeping up with their pace as though they’ve each got the devil on their heels. Derek desperately wants to run but he chooses instead to remain vigilant and keep count of every passing heartbeat in Stiles’ body. It sounds as if it’s getting slower and quieter but he hushes that cynical part of his mind. Stiles is strong and resilient; he’ll survive this just like he’s survived everything else thrown his way.

They eat up the miles like nothing, only stopping once to fill up their cars to the quarter tank to take them the rest of the way. It’s quiet with barely another soul around save for the cashier behind the counter but they throw a blanket over John and Stiles to hide their wounds and masquerade them as a tired father and son combo in case anybody asks. It’s not too far from the truth.

Finally, they slow right back down just as they’re re-entering Beacon Hills with the sun just peaking over the horizon, painting the skies a warm glow of reds, deep purples with hints of orange. John looks like a tired mess in the backseat, eyes focused but red with exhaustion as his fingers grip tightly over the blanket covering most of Stiles to keep him warm. It’s only 15 minutes later when both vehicles roll up to Chris’ and Allison’s street.

Chris takes up his usually spot in the garage while Alan parks his car in the driveway and the older man has barely pulled the handbrakes up before Derek is out of the car, helping John out and picking Stiles up again to bring him inside.

‘The guest room’s this way,’ Allison tells him as she leads the way inside, half-skipping and half-limping as she switches on the hallway lights and guides Derek to a musty barely-used room on the first floor of her home. The second he lays Stiles down across the clean sheets of the unused bed Alan begins to monitor his vitals. Scott follows after them, almost completely healed, though sluggish in his movements.

‘We need to discuss logistics before we dart off in separate directions,’ Chris brings up as he helps John inside the room and settles him on a covered chaise next to the bed before addressing his daughter. ‘Allison, call Melissa and get her to come over to check on all of you.’

‘Okay,’ she nods, already darting off to get her hands on a phone.

For a moment, Scott stands uncomfortably in the room, guiltily avoiding to look anywhere near John as the older man sits on the very edge of the seat to lay a hand over Stiles’. It’s not long before he trails after Allison with an expression mixed with shame and regret.

‘If memory serves me right then we only need a six digit pin to get into the evidence locker. I have something around here that we can use to hack us in,’ Chris continues as he gestures for Derek to follow him out of the room to afford Stiles and his father some privacy.

‘No hacking,’ John says adamantly before they can step out, ‘and no, we recently went through a change in security systems in light of what happened with Kate. You’ll need a pin and a fingerprint from one of the police staff to gain access into the room, so unless you’re thinking of knocking one of my colleagues out you’ll be needing me to come along with you.’

Chris opens his mouth to say otherwise but Derek shakes his head – who is he to argue with a man whose son’s life hangs in the balance?

‘What about Stiles?’ Derek asks as he turns to Alan.

The older man nods at them. ‘We’ve passed the worst of it; he’ll be alright without his father for a couple of hours.’

‘We’ll leave when Melissa gets here,’ Derek tells them with a nod, knowing Chris won’t argue against the change in plan.

\-----

His memory is hazy at best but he remembers the soothing lilt in John’s voice even as his claws tore into his skin, digging and digging and digging like a dog after a bone. Scott wishes the man was angrier with him and he wishes he wasn’t so forgiving, but it doesn’t change the fact that John isn’t angry and he isn’t blaming him for anything.

Allison finds him trying to wash his hands for the umpteenth time since she got on the phone with his mum who promises she’ll arrive within ten minutes. She switches the tap off and gently pulls him towards the bathtub instead, both still fully clothed, before turning the water on. They sit under the spray together, the water running red, hiding their tears and washing away everything except for the pain they both feel in their hearts.

 


	10. Chapter 10

Fear is a familiar concept. There hasn’t been a day where he’s been without it for a long time, not since he was still a young teenager high off ignorance and naivety. But, of course, as with all things that come with life and living, bliss doesn’t last forever.

Derek doesn’t believe in God but that doesn’t stop him from praying. He prays to his dead brothers and sisters, to his cousins, nieces and nephews. He prays to his aunts and uncles, grandparents and god-parents. He prays to all of them, especially his mother and father, and he prays they’ll continue to look after him and his pack, to continue running on beside them as the unexplained presence in the breeze even if most people would shake it off as “nothing”.

Right now, as he exchanges his dirty and torn shirt for a cleaner one, he prays they’ll watch over Stiles and keep him from succumbing to the poison in his veins.

\-----

**Chapter 10**

\-----

Melissa is a sight for sore eyes as she hurries into the room still dressed in her scrubs with her hair tied in a messy ponytail. She stumbles upon first seeing him and Stiles, hovering just beyond the threshold, but only hesitates for a brief moment before deciding to check over Stiles first.

‘You have no idea, _no idea_ , how glad I am to see all of you safe and sound,’ she tells him with a quiver in her voice and a watery look in her eyes. She sniffs and hastily wipes her eyes on the sleeve of her jacket as she routinely goes through all her mental checklists to make sure Stiles is alright. Melissa looks unsatisfied by his pulse rate and by the color of his face as well as his skin surface temperature, but she’s definitely more overwhelmed by the sight of his laceration; black around the edges but has long since stopped bleeding. ‘What’s happening to him?’

John stands, using the back of the chaise to prop against as he gets back up on his feet, straightening his borrowed clothes as he stands besides her, ‘It’s wolfsbane poisoning; we have to go to the station and get the bullets he was shot with.’

‘He’s not a werewolf, though,’ she says, looking confused and tense and anxious as she stares at him.

‘Alan will explain everything to you. I have to go,’ he murmurs as he holds her in a hug, more for moral support than anything else before leaving the house again with Chris and Derek.

He doesn’t know what’s been happening around Beacon Hills since he was taken from his very own doorstep barely a day ago and even though everything still looks the same, the same cannot be felt. His world has both contracted and expanded within just a small handful of hours, and while he knows he’ll be able to compartmentalize later he’s having a hard time wrapping his head around all of it right now. It doesn’t help that he also has a raging headache thumping a horrible staccato behind his right eye.

They’re gifted with green lights all the way and it’s not long before they’re parked behind the station, casting subtle glances in all directions to make sure nobody’s looking their way. It’s still the early hours of morning and if he’s right then there should only be maybe three or four people currently on shift at the station with Barbara at the reception manning the phone lines, Danny in the computer room updating their database, Elliot picking up the slack in paperwork while Jones is out in patrol.

‘Keep the engine running; we’ll be right back,’ John tells Chris before heading towards the back entrance that barely anyone ever uses anymore. Derek sticks close to him, almost unnecessarily so, but he’s still feeling a little sluggish on his feet and he appreciates the helping hand whenever he ends up staggering over nothing.

The door is made of plain steel, a little rusty around the edges and pockmarked with dents. The entire building itself is old but the keypad installed just above the handle is brand new and still shines as if they’ve just taken it out of the box.

‘There’re four people inside,’ Derek says as John pushes in the correct pin and twists the handle open, lightly shoving against the door once to loosen the rust around the hinges. It creaks something awful and Derek winces at the sharp sound but listens out for anybody coming their way. Thankfully, the hallway leading towards their destination remains empty.

John straightens his clothes again and walks as normally as he can, careful not to seem too out of place in a building that he’s spent the better part of his life working in. He can’t help the limp and he hopes Danny is too busy with their record keeping to pay any attention to the security cameras that’s currently aimed their way. He’s not up-to-date with the status of his abduction, suddenly feeling out of touch with his colleagues and the goings-on in the county, but the likelihood of his team not noticing that he failed to show up to finish off the rest of his shift is doubtful.

They round the corner until they hit the very back of the building where the CCTV room and evidence locker is located. Derek holds up a single finger and points inside the computer room and John is ever thankful the door, usually kept ajar to let in some airflow, is shut as they step past it. He closes the distance in two bounds, one thumb poised over the scanner while his other hand presses down on the buttons with furious concentration and intent. The light changes from red to green and there’s no resistance when John opens the door and lets them both inside.

It’s not often he steps foot in the evidence room but he finds himself standing in the middle of it again in just a little over two weeks, trying to save Stiles a second time.

He remembers they left the box regarding anything and everything to do with the deceased Kate Argent on the second highest shelf closest to the door. He spots it after a quick scan of the shelves but the second he tries to reach for it he feels a sharp pull against his chest and sides. He stumbles against the pain, groaning and hands shaking as he leans against the only table in the room to breathe around the ache all over his body.

‘There are gloves in here, use them to get the box down, will you?’ John pants as he opens the drawer and pulls out a pair of if for the other to take.

Derek nods, exhaling quietly through his nose as he slips on the gloves and stretches on the tips of his toes to pull out the labeled box, still moderately free of dust. John watches, while still trying to catch his breath, as Derek opens the box and begins to sift through the items, using his nose every once in a while until he finds what they’re both after.

The unused cartridges are all kept in a separate bag from the gun and Derek hands it over for John to pocket before putting everything back in its’ place as exactly as he can before closing the lid and sliding the box back onto the shelf.

‘Are you alright to go?’ Derek asks, eyes considering as he snaps the gloves off and shoves it into his pockets.

John nods, although he doesn’t move from his spot. His sides are aching, his head is throbbing, and he actually feels punch-drunk, but he thinks about Stiles, about how he’s close to dying, about how these bullets could mean his survival, so he nods once more, draws in a fortifying breath and forces himself to stand.

Derek opens the door for him using the sleeve of his henley and closes it with a quiet click behind them. They walk the same path back, quicker on their feet, passing the computer room and almost homebound until Derek takes hold of his arm just as he sees a man round the corner with a gun pointed at them.

‘Whatever you took from the evidence room I want you to drop it right now,’ Jones tells them lowly as he stands with both hands firm on the gun, pointed straight for them.

‘Neil, calm down,’ John tells the other man as he pulls Derek back behind him when the other tries to stand in the path of the gun. John holds his hands out defensively, his fingers trembling slightly as he stares down at the barrel of the gun and feeling small at the sight of it in such close proximity. He wonders if this is what Stiles felt when Kate aimed her gun at him.

‘Where the fuck have you been, John?’ His colleague swears, looking tense as he edges his way around the corner, ‘We almost started a whole county search for you when Elliot and Rodgers concluded you’d been taken.’

John shakes his head – he doesn’t have the time to explain everything – and tries to talk the man down instead. ‘Neil, you have to let the both of us go.’

‘I can’t do that,’ he says with a firm shake of his head, ‘I don’t know what’s been going on with you but you haven’t been the same since Stiles got shot – having secrets is one thing but taking evidence and destroying them is against the law, you know this.’

‘My kid is dying,’ he confesses, hearing his voice crack, feeling devastated over a fact he hasn’t allowed himself to acknowledge since he woke up on the hard floor in a San Francisco apartment building.

‘What?’ Jones falters, his gun lowering slightly as he takes another step forward.

‘Stiles is dying,’ he repeats as he tries to blink away the tears gathering in his eyes, ‘and if I don’t get back to him then he _will_ die and I can’t lose him, not again.’

Jones shakes his head, looking torn as he tells him, ‘This is against everything you wanted us to be.’

‘I know, but I already lost Claudia; don’t make me go through losing Stiles, too,’ he begs desperately, his whole body shaking in despair rather than pain and exhaustion as he pleads once more, ‘please, let us go.’

Jones’ throat clicks but he nods, clicking the safety of his gun back on as he motions for them to leave.

John immediately opens the door and lets Derek through first before following but not before telling his friend and colleague his thanks and letting the door whine back to a close.

As soon as he gets in the car Chris puts the car into gear and pulls away from the building, merging into the early-morning traffic back towards his home.

‘Run into any trouble?’ Chris asks casually, more to fill in the silence than any actual conversation as he manages to drive past a yellow light before it changes to red.

John lets out a grunt of sorts, feeling all kinds of wrung-out even as he withdraws the cartridges from his pocket. There are only four bullets left and he hopes it’ll be enough to save Stiles from whatever the hell it is he’s going through. It _has_ to be enough, and he _has_ to make it through this, otherwise John isn’t sure what else there is to live for if not for his late wife and the promises he made to her to keep their boy safe.

The sun is well on its way over the horizon, bringing with it the first hints of sky blue amongst the hues of orange and yellows. He doesn’t realize he’d fallen into a doze with his eyes open until they’re parked back in the garage and Derek is opening the door for him and helping him back out. Chris takes the bag of bullets from his limp fingers and immediately hurries into his home at a run.

By the time they both make it into the room Alan is already working on opening all the casings and tipping the powder out into a small bowl. It’s not until he has all four bullets emptied out that he brings a lighter to the dark ash and burns it, creating a bright flash of blue-purple around the room, a burst of color more vivid than the one he’d seen in the soot-covered basement of the Hale house.

‘Scott, hold him down for me, please. Allison, can you brace his legs? This is going to hurt,’ Alan tells them as he pours the ashes into the palm of his hand and waits for Stiles’ body to be sufficiently weighed down before smothering the black powder into the open wound on Stiles’ chest. The reaction is immediate.

He wakes screaming, trying to kick his way out of Allison’s hold and almost kneeing her in the face in the process. Mellissa lends her a hand right away, putting as much of her weight as she feels comfortable on his legs while Alan grabs the arm flung his way before it can make impact. Scott has an easier time suppressing Stiles’ shoulders to the bed but looks pained even as Stiles’ screams gradually reduce down to choked tears and pleas for his dad.

‘I’m here, I’m here,’ John cries as he takes hold of Stiles’ other wrists and holds on tight. ‘Breathe, Stiles, and bear with me.’

Stiles settles almost immediately, growing limp under their combined strengths as if his strings were suddenly cut. John panics for a moment, thinking the pain came too much too fast for his son to handle, but he sees the heavy way Stiles is breathing and the tired look in his eyes as he stares unseeingly at the ceiling.

John sees with relief the blackness in his veins receding and disappearing altogether within just moments of administration. New blood is seeping out of the laceration, no doubt caused from the strain in his struggles, and it continues to stay red rather than turn dark from poison. The ash worked, although John doesn’t have a single clue how.

‘Dad?’ Stiles chokes, voice hoarse as his eyes flit back and forth the faces hovering nearby until they land on him.

‘I’m right here,’ he says again as he runs his still-trembling hand through Stiles’ hair, limp and damp with sweat. The others carefully extract their hands away from his body, returning to him his space and full use of his tired limbs once more.

Stiles clings onto his jacket, pulling him in by the shoulders until he’s hunched awkwardly over the bed, holding onto him gingerly, careful not to smother him too fiercely. His body protests at the angle but he doesn’t care – Stiles is alive and so is he.

‘I had a dream about us; all of us,’ Stiles murmurs into his clothes, words muffling against the fabric.

‘Yeah?’ He prompts, keeping his voice light and encouraging. It’s not often Stiles remembers anything about what their life used to be.

‘We were at the beach, I think. We should go; help me jog my memory, or something.’

He chuckles softly under his breath, squeezing tightly as images of his son and wife collecting sea shells in the shallow water for their sand castle floods his mind, ‘Yeah, why not? We can work on our tans.’

Stiles snorts, grinning helplessly as he lets go and lies back down on the bed. ‘Stilinskis don’t tan, dad; we _burn_.’

‘Talk later,’ Melissa says with a motherly click of her tongue, though it doesn’t stop the look of joy and relief from taking over her features even as she pulls on a pair of surgical gloves and takes out the necessary items needed to re-stitch the wound on Stiles’ chest. ‘John, sit,’ she orders him as she points back at the covered chaise, ‘I’ll deal with you after I’m done mimicking Frankenstein.’

‘I’m alive,’ Stiles jokes, laughing freely as John moves to obey, his legs feeling more and more like jelly the closer to rest he gets. He barely sits on it for more than a few seconds before he decides it’s a good place to clock out for the day, still listening to his son’s laughter; the first real one he’s heard in years.

\-----

At first, all he can do is stare at the closed door with his gun hanging off his fingers, his emotions wavering back and forth between relief at knowing John is back and distress that Stiles is hurt and possibly dying. In-between one minute to the next he gets over his initial shock and tucks his sidearm back into his holster, re-checking to make sure the safety is on before heading back towards the main station floor.

Jones finds Elliot sipping at what is possibly his fourth cup of coffee in as many hours, eyes tired and posture stressed. He eases the man’s tension by telling him what just transpired at the back door of the station, informing him that John is alright, although a little worse for wear. Elliot looks up at the ceiling almost in thanks but the look quickly slips off his face when Jones tells him about Stiles.

The thing about Stiles is that he’s not just John’s son – he’s everyone’s soft spot.

 


	11. Chapter 11

Things don’t immediately go back to normal but they get close enough to it. Chris and Derek both make arrangements to go back to San Francisco to help clean up the mess left behind and John almost doesn’t care what they do with the dead bodies so long as they get rid of every shred of evidence pointed at any one of them. It goes against every fiber of his being to be this blatantly disregarding of the law but like Stiles said: this is beyond what the police are capable of understanding.

While John doesn’t care about the dead hunters that got caught in the crossfire he does care about Gerard Argent, or more specifically, the closure he’ll bring once they close the cases tied to his name.

Stiles confesses it was accidental, that he meant to disarm rather than kill, and even though he looks emotionally shattered he doesn’t regret his actions. John can never be proud of Stiles taking another life, but he’s damn proud he’s alive; that they’re both alive, and for their sake he hopes it’s enough.

\-----

**Chapter 11**

\-----

Melissa’s got them both under house-arrest and Stiles want to laugh in his dad’s face for the wonderful turn of events. Unfortunately though, any kind of raucous laughter or too-deep breathing makes his chest ache something awful, resetting his healing period back to square one, so he merely settles for an exaggerated chuckle instead.

His dad rolls his eyes as he flicks to another channel, the same one they’ve passed for the fourth time that afternoon since Melissa forced them on the couch after she’s done the first of her bi-weekly checks on their bandages, ‘It was only funny the first time, Stiles,’ he says with a hint of fond exasperation.

‘On the contrary; it’s funny all the time,’ he grins, just to rub it in a little bit more.

‘The both of you are behaving like children,’ Melissa scolds half-heartedly as she re-enters the living room after having finished restocking their first-aid kit of supplies.

‘We are young at heart,’ Stiles quips in return as he turns his head to follow her movement around the house as if this were her second home.

She laughs lightly as she slips her jacket back on before grabbing her keys and handbag from the hook by the door, ‘Just don’t go daring each other to see which one of you can jump off the roof and fly.’

‘I don’t remember this!’ He denies vehemently while ignoring the incredulous snort coming from beside him, ‘Therefore I didn’t do anything of the sort.’

‘I have photo proof,’ she retorts, looking smug as she opens the front door but the look quickly morphs back to glee as she tells them, ‘there’s a pot of beef stew in the fridge and a bowl of mashed potatoes. I’ll pick up the dishes when I check in on you guys in a couple of days. Bye!’

‘Thanks Melissa!’ The both of them shout in return as she waves with her fingers and shuts the door behind her, locking it up with her spare keys as she goes.

John shakes his head, looking as if he’s questioning all of his life’s choices that led him up to this point but eagerly changes the subject to something else, ‘You never told me your results,’ he brings up as he settles on a replay of a baseball game they’d already watched last night, throwing the remote control back down on top of the shared blanket between them.

‘He says I’m in the clear,’ he answers as he scratches at his collarbone, just skirting around the edge of the new bandages Melissa helped wrap him with. Sometimes he feels like a mummy but he’s thankful nobody tried to take out his internal organs or scramble his brain through his nose for whatever ritualistic reason. ‘Alan pretty much gave me the same advice as every other doctor: no strenuous activity and to take Vicodin only when needed, but who needs Vicodin when all we have to do is call Scott or any one of the others to pay us a visit,’ he says with a casual shake of his phone before tossing it to join the remote control on the couch.

John sighs half-heartedly, ‘I can’t believe we’re taking advice from a veterinarian.’

Stiles snorts, ‘I can’t believe he’s Scott’s new boss.’ He wonders how much old-man Orville knows about the supernatural side of things, if at all. It’s a bizarrely small world that Orville decided, of all people, to hand over his business to Alan Deaton, and Stiles can’t tell if it’s coincidence or a kind of fate.

It’s been five days since they were discharged from the hospital and a little over a week since their return from San Francisco and although things have settled back down somewhat the both of them still wake up in the middle of the night from nightmares regarding the other. On those night Stiles consoles himself by going to his dad’s room, padding quietly until he’s got the door open just enough to look inside and make sure everything’s alright, watching for a few minutes before going back to sleep fitfully until morning hits. He knows he’s not the only one to make late-night trips back and forth their rooms and he’s surprised they haven’t worn the carpet down from their constant shuffling about. Those nights, practically every night, are the hardest on the both of them.

When the sun’s out its easier, there are fewer shadows to fight and lose against, but even then it’s only just marginally better.

‘So,’ his dad starts to say, keeping his tone light and casual as his eyes continue to focus on the batter making a swing and a miss, ‘are you going to take him up on his offer?’

Stiles makes a face as he gives a one-shoulder shrug, ‘Don’t know if I can. Emissaries are all about keeping the balance and I’m about as biased as they get.’ Sometimes he hates the spark he was born with and sometimes he wonders how different his life would’ve turned out if he’d been without it.

‘You’ve always been able to do the things you put your mind to. I have a feeling this won’t be any different. Your mother always did say you take like a duck to water,’ he finishes with a warm grin as he messes up Stiles’ bed-hair.

He tolerates it with a wide smile, feeling lighter at the mention of his mother and happy that the air surrounding them isn’t heavy and burdened.

‘It’s a lot to think about, I know,’ John continues, sighing lightly as he lays a hand on Stiles’ shoulder, ‘but you should consider it. Don’t deny yourself that chance to learn more for my sake or for anybody else’s.’

‘I would’ve thought you’d prefer me to stay out of it,’ he can’t keep the surprise out of his voice as he says this, ‘keep away from anything and everything to do with the supernatural business.’

John snorts, though not unkindly, ‘Yeah, and I would’ve preferred if you’d chosen a career that didn’t involve joining the academy four years ago if that’ll make my case.’

‘Dad,’ he shifts in his seat guiltily.

‘I’m not judging,’ he consoles, ‘you never do things without a reason and you’ve always done things with the best of intentions, regardless of whether people are informed of it or not.’

Stiles hears a car pull up on their driveway, cranking on the handbrakes and switching off the engine but he ignores it as he tells his dad, ‘It’s not going to be any safer than what we already do, you know that, right? If anything, it might even turn out to be more than what any of us will have bargained for.’

John shrugs good-naturedly, as if he’d already taken all of it into consideration, ‘If it means knowledge, power and safety, well, I suppose danger just comes with the territory.’

‘Don’t get me started on territory,’ Stiles groans but gets up when he hears four heavy knocks on their front door, gingerly getting to his feet and letting his dad steal his side of the blanket. He takes a quick peek through the curtains, fingers itching to pick up the steel baseball bat kept by the door, but finds a familiar trio of people standing outside with baskets full of fresh fruits, flowers and chocolates, the latter of which he’ll be confiscating or, at the very least, portioning out carefully. ‘Aren’t you guys supposed to be patrolling the streets of Beacon Hills?’ He brings up the second he gets the door open.

‘We’re on our lunch break,’ Elliot says with a smile as he gestures for Stiles to move out of the way while he brings in the basket full of fruits.

‘Uh, okay, sure, but I don’t think it’s a good idea for three senior officers to take breaks in the same hour, two of whom are deputies,’ he shrugs as he lets the others in. Predictably, he’s ignored.

Jones settles the basket of flowers in the middle of the living room table amongst pens, old magazines and half-used notepads, adding a bright splash of color in their otherwise drab bachelor pad. It brings a small feminine touch to the environment, something which the house has been lacking for many years despite Melissa’s occasional interference.

‘I had to fight with Barbara for this. I won fair and square,’ Rodgers boasts as he sets the last basket on the dining table next to the fruits.

‘Great,’ Stiles congratulates sarcastically as he makes a show of clapping slowly, ‘you duked it out with a lady in her mid-fifties to carry in a basket full of chocolates. Thanks.’

‘Boys,’ John admonishes as he gingerly gets up from the couch, dragging his feet towards Stiles and giving him a reprimanding shake of his shoulders, just once; hard enough to make a point but not enough to agitate his bandages. ‘Play nicely.’

Stiles groans again but dutifully goes to put on a kettle. ‘I’ll make coffee for everyone. None for you, dad.’

‘I feel like he’s punishing me in some ways,’ John mock-whispers not so quietly to the others, laughing companionably while the water boils. Stiles doesn’t dignify that with an answer as he pulls out five mugs from the cupboard and starts scooping in instant coffee grounds into three of them according to how he remembers the others take it. He trades the coffee for the honey next, putting a generous teaspoon of it for himself and his dad in the last two cups.

The four of them settle around the dining room, talking over the baskets until Rodgers decides to shove the fruits and chocolates to the very end of the table out of their way. The conversation starts off light, from what Stiles can hear, but it slowly progresses to something half-forced and half as though their three colleagues are all fishing for something from either one of them. As Stiles tries to soften and melt the honey with some tepid water while keeping half an ear on what they’re saying he can’t help but come to the conclusion that his dad knows what it is they’re after.

Even though they’re outside of an interrogation room it doesn’t change the fact that this is _exactly_ what it is. As the minutes pass his dad begins to look slightly more and more tight-lipped and closed off to the conversation forcing Stiles to flick off the switch on the kettle just as the water comes to a rolling boil, making it chime prematurely.

They quiet immediately.

‘Is there something going on down at the station?’ Stiles asks as he pours in some water into each of the cups before pulling the milk out from the fridge.

‘Something like that,’ Elliot answers with a shrug that’s too rigid to come off as casual. ‘We’re just trying to organize some paperwork with your dad.’

He narrows his eyes at the others as he brings the cups over to the table, letting everybody take their respective drinks. ‘What kind of paperwork?’

‘Something only your dad can authorize.’

‘Right, of course,’ he nods slowly, unconvinced, as he brings his mug to his lips but doesn’t drink from it. ‘Is this about Gerard?’

‘No, it’s not,’ his dad says in a rushed manner, ‘don’t worry about that; we’ve got it sorted.’

‘Then stop it with the subtext. What’s going on?’ He almost snaps as he sets his mug down onto the table a little too roughly, causing the honey mixture to slosh over the sides.

They all stare at one another for a moment before John suddenly stands, turning his attention to the three men in his home and telling them, ‘Drink your coffee and go. I appreciate you boys coming over to personally deliver the gift baskets but your lunch hour is up soon and I think it’s time for you to start making your way back to work.’

Surprisingly, none of them put up a fight, although they do take their time leaving. Eventually, after some five minutes later once most of their coffee has been consumed Stiles sees them off at the door.

‘No, seriously, what’s going on?’ Stiles asks under his breath before Jones can leave, holding him up at the door.

‘We’re hoping you and your dad can tell us. We know he’s trying to look out for you, but…’ he trails off as he pulls out his car keys and lightly jiggles it in his hand. ‘Anyway, you should talk to him about it.’

He watches him leave after Elliot and Rodgers, keeping an eye on them even long after they’ve turned the corner going out of their street. Eventually, he shuts the door behind him and makes his way back to the kitchen where his dad is tipping out the leftover coffee dredges into the sink and aggressively washing the mugs.

‘What was that about?’ He asks with a bewildered shake of his head as he stands under the doorway joining the dining room and kitchen together.

‘Let’s not talk about it now,’ John mutters as he dries his hands on a dish towel, passing Stiles and gingerly sitting back down at the dining table, idly going through the fruit basket before picking out an orange and peeling it.

He starts to seethe, feeling hypocritical, hearing Jones’ words echo back to him. He thought they were both done with keeping secrets from one another but apparently his dad has a few more skeletons hiding behind in his closet than he thought. ‘Either you tell me or I do some digging on my own.’ After all, Danny’s not the only hacker who can bypass security.

‘ _Stiles_ ,’ he warns.

‘I hid a lot of things from you, okay?’ He confesses, his voice cracking at the end but he plows on regardless of the shake in his words. ‘Especially in these last four years so I get it; I don’t have the right to ask you for anything, but it was _hell_ because I was stupid enough to think keeping you out of the loop would keep us safe when all it did was put a huge strain on our already seriously awkward relationship. Three weeks ago I told you everything. Now it’s my turn: _talk to me_.’

John’s stern expression slowly fades until he resigns himself over, tiredly running his hand over his face before setting the half-peeled orange next to his mug. ‘It seemed like the best option at the time.’

His heart skips a beat as he sits down opposite him. ‘What did you do?’ _It must be bad_ , he thinks, especially if Jones, Elliot and Rodgers all decided to hound him in his own house for information. He wonders what his dad is hiding, why he’s hiding it and how long this has been going on for.

John sighs, expression pinched but not regretful as he tells him, ‘I deleted your records, the ones about Dylan O’Brien.’

Stiles swears under his breath, clambering back up to his feet to pace around the room. ‘You know, in doing so you basically just painted a target on the back of my head. Talk about irony, dad,’ he snaps half-heartedly as he turns and paces the other way, clipping his hip on the backrest of the dining chair as he passes.

‘I wanted to protect you from Gerard.’

‘ _Why_?’ He shouts, feeling on edge and guilty that he somehow forced his dad into actually committing evidence tampering. ‘It wouldn’t have stopped him. Beacon Hills is my _home_ ; he wouldn’t even _need_ to get into police records and use them to find me.’

‘I wanted to protect you from the others, too,’ he admits quietly as he holds his mug between both hands and stares down into it.

Stiles has to take a slow breath, one after another to calm down before he leads himself into a panic attack. ‘What do you mean?’

John opens and closes his mouth twice, as though trying and failing to find the right words to say, but he eventually shakes his head before revealing to him, ‘There was a body in the woods some years old and we found a bullet in the skull cavity.’

Stiles pales but nods all the same as he slowly sits back down, ‘It was from my old handgun, right? The one I lost at the school?’

‘The one I keep in my safe.’

He almost swears but manages to cut himself off. ‘Dad, you should’ve left it alone,’ he whispers shakily.

‘I made a promise to your mother,’ he tells him as he unflinchingly looks up from the cup in his hands to meet Stiles’ eyes. ‘We lost you for a long time and I’m sorry I didn’t manage to find you before Claudia passed away but I’m trying to keep my word.’

He can see where his dad is coming from – that fierce need to protect the only family either one of them has left – but he also knows that something like this will do more harm than good. After everything they’ve been through they’ll need all the good they can muster, even if it means turning themselves in. ‘We can’t do this; you have to tell them.’

‘We don’t have to,’ John begs, reaching forward to take Stiles’ hand in his own, squeezing tight and desperate. ‘So what if some files has gone missing? Dylan isn’t even a real person.'

He flinches but doesn’t take it to heart. Dylan was as much him as he is Stiles. ‘I don’t want this to hang over our heads and to be used against us. I don’t want this to come back and bite us in the ass. I don’t want this to ruin what we both tried so hard to keep up with in these last four years.’

‘And what’s that?’ He asks, his voice wavering as he blinks away the shine in his eyes.

‘Being a family.’

John sighs but nods reluctantly, ‘I’m sorry.’

‘I’m sorry, too.’

He doesn’t know what’s going to happen to them; nothing feels alright and the stability they worked hard to hold onto is shattering around them, but as long as they stay together then they’ll be able to cope with it, one step at a time.

\-----

Always expect the unexpected – this is basically one of the mottos the station lives by, but even knowing this he can’t contain the surprise evident in his voice when John calls him for a meeting barely more than a couple of hours after their last visit to his home. Although John is adopting a business-like approach to the phone call it doesn’t stop the strain in his voice from being heard, as if he’s ripping off a band-aid to get this conversation over and done with. Neil can sympathize.

A time is arranged and it’s agreed that Rodgers, Elliot and himself will go to their house again later on after their shifts are over. While he knows what the meeting will entail it doesn’t prepare him for the resigned look on both of the Stilinski’s faces when they re-enter the dining room to find a single handgun on the table, magazine out.

It’s awkward, to say the least, but they all sit down and they talk.

 


	12. Chapter 12

His mum tells him that Stiles and his dad are both fine, if a little worse for wear, but it doesn’t help the guilt from festering away inside of him whenever he flashes back to the moment he almost tore John apart in his mindless haze. He can’t sleep, though if he does it’s never for long and it’s never well, and he can barely stomach down a full meal. His hands are almost perpetually shaking and he’s so scared of himself; of being around anybody, so whenever he can get away with it he secludes himself.

This is how Derek finds him – hanging out in the backyard just beyond the tree line – close enough to know everything that’s going on inside the house but far enough away that nobody can see him. Derek doesn’t say a word, merely takes a seat on the grass next to him and listens, too.

At least now Scott knows he’s not the only one with a penchant for harboring guilt that’s been long excused for. It’s hard to accept forgiveness when they can hardly forgive themselves.

\-----

**Chapter 12**

\-----

He wakes up with a start, feeling heavy and exhausted, his mind still replaying the horrible clang of metal as the cell doors slam shut behind him. _It’s just a dream_ , he tells himself but he can’t help the fine tremors in his hands and body as he thinks back on the scene – of his dad lying in a pool of his own blood, barely breathing, in the cell right across from him. No matter how much he called out for help, screaming himself raw, none came.

His chest aches as he pushes himself off the bed but it’s more to do with the fact he woke up lying face down on his stomach than from his chest wound. Melissa had helped take off his sutures and warned him to not make her stitch him back together again. Specifically: ‘Or so help me God I will use _staples_ next time.’ He’ll take her word for it.

It’s just gone six in the morning, his room lightening up with the first pale shades of blue as Stiles sits up and slowly makes his way to his dad’s bedroom. He feels more tired than when he went to sleep the night before but he brushes the fatigue aside and trudges on – it seems to be his normal setting nowadays. The door is ajar when he gets there and all it needs is a little push to widen it further, just enough for him to look inside.

Stiles is immediately greeted by the sight of his dad lying sprawled on his side of the bed with half of his blanket kicked off onto the floor and snoring just slightly. He watches for a while, notices that his dad looks more rested than he has in weeks and feels thankful that he’s not suffering through another nightmare that’s been plaguing them so frequently since their return from San Francisco.

It had been a mess, but they managed to pawn off a lot of cold cases on the now-deceased Gerard Argent. It was a quick fix-it but Stiles doubts it’ll hold under a real investigation should anybody be curious enough to open it up again. Despite the oddity of everything that’s happened recently it was ruled that kidnapping, torture and intent to murder was enough for most people to agree that Stiles was not in the wrong when he shot Gerard.

But any day now, someone is going to wise up and realize something is going on within the police ranks, and that people are keeping secrets, making up things that don’t add up. Any day now Stiles’ nightmare is going to come true: they’re going to end up in jail to spend the rest of their lives repenting for all the crimes they willingly committed; his dad for fraudulence and himself for a list of crimes ten miles long.

The partnership he and his dad built up with Jones, Elliot and Rodgers is ruined – this is the price they had to pay for secrecy – but between the five of them they manage to recover the deleted files from the police database and discretely return the guns (both Stiles’ and Kate’s) back to the evidence locker all the while hoping they covered their tracks enough that there won’t be any repercussions.

They said it should be fine, that with Kate and Gerard both dead and the fact that Dylan O’Brien is actually an old man living out the rest of his days in a swanky retirement home somewhere in New Zealand there shouldn’t be any more open investigations in regards to any of them. One can hope.

He snorts quietly, feeling pessimistic as he backs away from the door and leaves it ajar before going downstairs. He knows he won’t be able to go back to sleep, no matter how exhausted he feels, but it’s not until he’s halfway down the stairs that he hears a faint murmuring of voices in the living room. Stiles almost panics then but quickly calms – no thief would be stupid enough to try and watch TV rather than take it, let alone steal from the sheriff’s home.

‘What, is our TV somehow better than the one in the motel room you’re staying at?’ He asks as he stands in front of Derek with arms crossed and eyebrows raised.

‘They don’t have cable.’

Their house doesn’t have cable either – up until recently the both of them are barely home enough to use the TV – but he doesn’t mention it. Instead he takes up the empty seat on the couch and steals the remote from Derek’s lap, switching to a different channel – he sees enough dead bodies and horrific incidents on an almost daily basis; he doesn’t need to watch it in his free time at home, either.

‘How did you get in?’ Stiles asks as he settles on a gardening program.

‘I never left,’ he says as he takes the remote to turn up the volume a single notch, more for Stiles’ benefit than his own. ‘Your dad told me I could sleep in the guest room if I wanted.’

‘I can see that you absolutely did not take him up on that offer,’ he quips as he takes in the refolded blanket on the arm of the couch.

Derek shrugs as he turns his attention away from the TV to him. ‘Are you okay?’

Stiles frowns at the question, lets it deepen at the look in Derek’s eyes. ‘No, but I will be. I’ve got a lot of recovery to go through before I can consider picking up my job again. Even then I’ll probably be stuck behind a desk doing paperwork.’ He’s not looking forward to that but at least it’ll be better than lying stagnant at home with not much to do to keep the shadows and nightmares at bay.

‘What about everything else?’

He swallows. ‘I don’t know. It’s hard to tell at the moment. I won’t have to worry too much about facing persecution since we managed to lay practically all of the blame on Gerard but it doesn’t change the fact that it’s still a cover-up.’ There are a lot of holes; too many gaps to be able to fill in, even with the five of them combined.

‘We owe you and your dad a lot for that; for putting your lives and your careers on the line.’

Stiles can’t help but feel uncomfortable, always does at the mention of Gerard and anything to do with his past life, but he forges on and accepts the unspoken word of thanks from Derek as it is.

He looks towards the dining room table then, and notices the floor plans still spread out to take up most of the space. ‘You don’t have to rush, you know, now that you’re actually going to do something about the land. The council isn’t setting you a deadline to get a house up by so-and-so date so long as you’re taking initiative.’

‘I’m aware,’ he nods as he keeps his eyes focused on a middle-aged man explaining the multiple uses and care of lavender. ‘But you’re right – nobody is ever ready to move on; all we can do is try.’

Stiles shifts in his seat, more for something to do than to find a comfortable position. ‘How long did you guys stay up for?’ Stiles hadn’t been able to keep them company longer than just after midnight; he’d been too tired from lack of sleep to be able to contribute much more than a grunt to the entire conversation. His dad was zealous in his attempt to help Derek with the floor plan. The last Stiles can remember they were still debating the merits of whether having a basement was a good idea or not. General consensus was: no.

‘He stayed until we got most of the basic plan done, probably at around half past two in the morning.’

He whistles lowly as he gets up to look over the new additions. The two storeys are still empty of any specific plan but there are two bullet points next to the attic space for it to either act as a storage area or be converted into a bedroom, albeit a low-ceiling one. As far as Stiles can figure, the option to have a basement is completely vetoed. ‘This is kind of big,’ he brings up as he lays out all three levels side by side of each other.

‘It’s not,’ Derek says as he moves to stand beside him, eyes soft as he takes in the beginning stages of his new home. ‘The original structure was easily twice this.’

‘Yeah,’ he nods and swallows down the fact that Derek’s family consisted of three other siblings, his parents and his parent’s siblings and their children living under the same roof.

‘Boyd will stay with me, and Isaac, too, once his lease is over.’

Stiles nods again, assuming Boyd will want to sell the house, although he’s not sure if the other will go through with it or not: his grandmother died there but it doesn’t mean all the memories died along with her. He should know.

‘Everybody will have their own room,’ Derek continues as he smoothes down the plan, the beginnings of a smile appearing on the corners of his lips. ‘Even you.’

‘Even me?’ He repeats, surprised that he’s even included.

He nods, something small and barely noticeable if Stiles hadn’t already been staring at him. ‘Especially you.’

Stiles opens his mouth to turn it down; he already has a home here with his dad, but he quickly shuts down the idea. He understands the meaning behind the offer, what it means to have a place within the pack; a symbol and an oath that more than solidifies their bonds, so he huffs and thanks him instead. After all, who says he can only be allowed one home?

‘So, you’re going to stay in the motel until the project is finished?’ Stiles asks as he leans back on the table, arms crossed loosely over his chest as he watches the other add extra notes onto the side margins – garden, back porch, double garage, tree house(?).

‘I—’ he starts as he turns towards the guest bedroom before looking back at Stiles, ‘I’ve already moved my bags here.’

‘Good,’ he nods in satisfaction, grinning widely when Derek mimics the expression back, the both of them feeling lighter than they have in years.

\--

‘Well, if you ever want to extend you’ve got plenty of land to do it on. Ever considered adding a pool house?’

‘That would require I have a pool.’

‘You can take that as a suggestion, then.’

‘I have a lake,’ Derek says with a casual shrug.

Stiles makes a face at him, ‘That lake is not _yours_.’

He shrugs again, ‘It’s on my property.’

‘Are you sure you’re not confusing it for your territory? Because those two things are _completely different things_.’

Derek stares, eyebrow raised and Stiles has to bite the inside of his cheek to stop himself from laughing. It doesn’t hold.

\-----  
\-----

**Epilogue (5 months later)**

\-----  
\-----

Teenagers: they just don’t know when to quit.

It’s routine at this point, to head up for another check-up at the lookout only to find a group of kids being rowdy with one another over trivial things like gossip, peer pressure and dramas with their ex. Thankfully, there’s no alcohol involved, or none that Jones can actually see or smell so between the three of them everything gets settled quickly with just a verbal warning. Nobody got hurt, after all.

Elliot is yawning, a subtle signal that it’s time for him to clock out of his double-shift and head on home to his pregnant wife. Jones can’t help but tease him; ‘You sure you can handle having a kid, too? You’ll be pulling a triple at this rate.’

‘Har-har,’ Elliot snips good-naturedly while the others laugh as he gets into the passenger seat and shuts the door after him, gesturing through the glass for Rodgers to hurry up.

He’s just about to get into his patrol unit when he hears a crack in the woods, followed by heavy footsteps and even heavier breathing.

‘Who’s there?’ Jones calls out as he pulls out his flashlight and aims it over the roof of his car through the trees where he can hear someone approaching them. The motion makes Rodgers mimic him while Elliot hurriedly unstraps his seatbelt to follow them.

There’s at least two, but one sounds heavier than the other and it’s not until he hears a low, reverberating growl that he quickly draws out his gun, deftly flicking off the safety.

 _Damn cougars,_ he thinks to himself, thankful the kids are gone as a pair of yellow eyes zero in on him, rapidly gaining on his location until he realizes that the shape is nothing like that of a mountain lion at all.

It’s worse.

A roar, loud and ominous, echoes through the preserve, shaking him down to his bones and freezing him in the spot. The shape is all wrong; it’s too big, the eyes are too bright and the muzzle is drenched in blood.

He can’t breathe suddenly.

The thing crashes into the side of his car with a horrible crunch of metal and Jones barely has any time to brace himself against the impact as it sends him flying almost ten feet from where he last stood. It hurts trying to get back up; his hands are shaking and he can’t find his flashlight or his firearm.

There’s gunfire, going off like popcorn and he can hear Elliot cursing and swearing, fear tinging his words as he empties the round of his gun until it clicks uselessly in the air. The beast, whatever it is, roars again as bullets rip through its body, doing little more than angering it as it pushes the car aside as though it’s made of rubber instead of heavy-duty steel.

Jones isn’t religious but he can’t help the instinct to pray as the creature charges towards them, claws out and ready to rend them to pieces.

There’s shouting and screaming and he can’t find his own voice, not even as a dark blur intercepts the beast, tackling it to the ground barely a foot away from reaching him. Jones can’t breathe still as the two things – he can’t tell what they are – grapple along the ground. Amongst the yelling he can hear bone breaking, clothes ripping and a _snick_ of a gun being reloaded.

‘Whenever you’re ready,’ he hears someone say and Jones has to force himself to get back up on his feet at the sight of Stiles coming through the woods dressed in hunting gear with a rifle in his hands. A different kind of fear grips into him as he shouts for Stiles to run; to get away from this as fast as possible, but the younger Stilinski does the exact opposite as he approaches the two creatures trying to one-up over the other.

The smaller of the two has an arm tightly encircled over the neck of the beast, holding it down and exposing its’ weak point, and Stiles doesn’t hesitate to shoot it in the head, effectively killing it with little fanfare.

Jones doesn’t know what to think, not when the other creature gets up and reveals itself to be another human but the eyes are different; their feature twisted to fairy tale proportions.

He wants this to be an unbelievably realistic nightmare, one he’ll wake up from any second from now.

‘I am getting too old for this,’ another familiar voice gripes breathlessly as they enter the clearing.

Jones startles at the sight of John holding what seems to be a shotgun in both hands and he can’t help but panic as he looks over at the younger Stilinski who is speaking to a blood-covered Derek Hale as if it’s normal to talk over a dead body between them.

He doesn’t know what to think, mostly because it just occurred to him that Derek Hale is a new entrant in the police academy.

‘You boys alright?’ John addresses to the three of them and he can barely manage a nod to show that he’s not completely catatonic as their Sheriff checks in on all of them, asking rudimentary questions over their mental welfare.

‘What the fuck was that?’ Elliot asks, breathless and pale as a ghost as he eyes the dead creature on the ground in front of them that’s slowly shifting back to resembling something human.

John sighs, shaking his head in a non-answer as Stiles and Derek both approach them, the former of the two handing the other what looks to be a packet of wet wipes.

‘It’s called a werewolf,’ Stiles answers for them.

Nobody laughs even though everything feels and sounds absurd.

Jones, Elliot and Rodgers all look towards Derek who’s wiping off the blood on his face as if it’s a normal everyday occurrence; nothing to bat an eyelash about. Everything about his features is back to normal: no fangs, no claws, and no unnaturally bright eyes.

‘Okay!’ Stiles says with a loud clap of his hands, startling the three of them. ‘Story time it is.’

‘The both of you can handle that,’ Derek tells him as he hands back the packet of wipes and trudges back towards the dead body.

‘H-hold on a minute,’ Rodgers begins weakly as John sighs again, rubbing the skin between his eyes as if he’s dealing with another wayward child.

Jones can’t help swearing as he watches the other pick up the body as though it weighs no more than a bag of potatoes before disappearing back into the woods. ‘Shit, John. I wouldn’t have believed any of this if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes.’

‘There are two things you need to know,’ Stiles cuts in before anybody can attempt stopping Derek from fleeing with a dead body over his shoulder, ‘the existence of werewolves and the existence of hunters.’

‘Are you a hunter, then?’ Rodgers asks, eyeing the rifle with the slightest edge of awe and trepidation. After all, it succeeded where their firearms failed miserably.

‘I wasn’t given a choice.’

‘Before we continue,’ John interjects, ‘this conversation is never to be repeated outside of a few select people. Everything involved is completely off the record, understand?’

They nod, and they find their entire lives turning upside-down and inside-out within the span of just half an hour. Everything and nothing gets settled. For every solved question, a handful more pops up in its place. Stiles tries to explain as much as he can but John is the one who opts to give them a quick rundown on what’s been happening over the past few years rather than providing the nitty-gritty details. It’s then a lot of things they chalked up to mountain lion attacks are actually code for werewolves instead.

Not that there’s actually a police code for supernatural attacks that go bump in the night.

‘It’s hard to believe, I know; I’ve been in your shoes,’ John tells them, not unkindly. ‘It’ll take some time for everything to sink in and if any one of you wants to duck out that’s fine with us. None of you signed up for this so we understand; this isn’t something anybody would just choose to do willy-nilly.’

Nobody is asking the obvious, but maybe that’s because it doesn’t bear asking. Jones doesn’t know how to feel, weather frustrated on Stiles’ behalf; hounding for the blood of a dead man or relieved that Stiles still managed to retain some form of humanity within him despite his questionable upbringing.

12 years…

He calms, and belatedly scoffs. ‘How long have we known each other for, John? You don’t even have to ask.’

Matching grins light up both the Stilinski’s faces.

‘Welcome to the fold, boys.’

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ANNNNDDD that's it, folks. I don't think I'll be coming back and I don't think I'm going to promise anything else in the series in case I can't keep my word. I hope you all enjoyed the story! Thanks for coming along for the ride. Maybe I'll catch you around in another bit of fiction. 
> 
> BYE!!!

**Author's Note:**

> If you spot any mistakes please let me know and I'll try and correct them ASAP. I'm usually a stickler for grammar and spelling but sometimes it slips. It also doesn't help that the word document I used is kind of old so sometimes I end up missing spaces in between words which is majorly annoying but oh wells. It is what it is.
> 
> See you in the next chapter!


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